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Democrats in disarray as Michigan AG calls for recount after convention vote declared 'a mess'
A failed Michigan Democratic AG candidate backs a full recount of convention votes, alleging broken rules and improperly calculated ballots were found.
Should a California union dictate how clinics spend money? Employers sue to block ballot measure
California’s billionaires are not the only ones fighting back against the state’s largest health workers union this election season.
FBI seizure of Fulton County election ballots happened quickly after criminal probe opened, new timeline shows
A newly released timeline from the Justice Department reveals the FBI seized 2020 election materials from Georgia just a few weeks after opening a criminal probe, which experts told CNN is an unusually fast pace for a case of its kind.
Delayed Louisiana Primaries Stoke Confusion at Ballot Box
On the first day of early voting, some glimpses of voter bewilderment came into focus, part of a dizzying scramble playing out days after a major Supreme Court ruling.
Trump’s Push for Electoral Retribution Heads to the Ballot Box
The president’s push to punish political enemies in his own party will play a starring role in a series of Republican primaries this month in which he has backed challengers.
Trump’s Push for Electoral Retribution Heads to the Ballot Box
The president’s push to punish political enemies in his own party will play a starring role in a series of Republican primaries this month in which he has backed challengers.
Prop 4 repeal ‘petition is insufficient’ for 2026 ballot, Utah Lt. Gov. Hendeson declares
Utah Lt. Gov Deidre Henderson formally declared an initiative to repeal Proposition 4 failed to make the November ballot.
Who’s running for Congress in California? These races could determine the majority
Ballots are in the mail for California’s primary election. These are the congressional races CalMatters is watching closely — and the candidates fighting for their political lives.
Should a California union dictate how clinics spend money? Employers sue to block ballot measure
California health clinics are suing to stop a union ballot measure that would dictate how they spend money — and they say it could force hundreds of clinics to close.
Local Politics: There’s nothing secondary about primaries
Here are the local candidates on Franklin County’s ballot this year.
Federal judge rejects Colorado GOP’s effort to block unaffiliated voters from participating in party’s 2026 primaries
U.S. District Judge Philip A. Brimmer said excluding unaffiliated voters days before the state’s ballot certification deadline, and just weeks before ballots start being mailed out, would create too much confusion.
Louisiana constitutional amendment would let parishes stop taxing business inventory
Here’s what to know about the amendment, which will appear on the May 16 ballot. Early voting starts Saturday.
California's race for secretary of state shows partisan divide over how to count ballots
Shirley Weber says accuracy matters more than speed. Her GOP challenger says the delays undermine trust. It could take a month to certify June's results.
What's on the Ohio ballot for the May 5 primary election?
Ohio voters face big choices May 5 with races for governor, U.S. Senate, attorney general, treasurer, secretary of state and the state Supreme Court.
Tech: Data center politics in Maine
Data center politics — an issue we’re closely following — are becoming very tricky for candidates on the ballot this year.
GOP wants Knox County commissioner prosecuted for voting in their primary
Republicans are asking the DA to look into whether Courtney Durrett's ballot choice was an \
Denver Health ended up on a list of at-risk hospitals — but it's not as bad off as you might think
Denver Health’s CEO says any talk of service reduction is “premature,” after a new report lists it among Colorado hospitals most at risk.
California billionaire tax nears ballot after union collects nearly double required signatures
California's proposed billionaire wealth tax clears a major signature hurdle as opponents warn it could kill 108,000 jobs and drive more billionaires out of the state.
Mike Minogue wins Mass. GOP endorsement for governor in a landslide
Former Baker Administration official Mike Kennealy fell just short of making the primary ballot.
In California, a Voter ID Proposal Is Set to Appear on the Ballot in November
A Republican-backed initiative has cleared the signature threshold for the election. Critics say the proposal could make it harder for people to vote.
Voter ID initiative qualifies for California's November election
California makes it easy to vote, with mail-in ballots and registration at the DMV. An upcoming ballot measure would add new voter ID requirements compelling people to prove their citizenship before they cast a ballot.
Ashley Moody, Alex Vindman will both face Primary battles to get on November ballot
Angie Nixon will face off with Vindman for the Democratic nomination while four other Republicans joined a GOP Primary with Moody.
Honorable mentions on the list of Tampa Bay’s Most Powerful Politicians: Josie Tomkow, Wilton Simpson and Jay Collins
All 3 face voters at the ballot box this year, but only 2 have uncertain political futures.
California election officials face false choice: count votes quickly or count them right
California is famous for its slow ballot counting. That’s because of the state’s security fixtures and efforts to ensure every vote is counted. Experts don’t agree on a fix.
Former councilman rallies against bill defunding sports complex
In a letter to the Minnesota House and Senate Taxes Committees, Bransford argues the state should not interfere with the result of a 2023 ballot measure, which approved a sales tax extension to raise $65 million for indoor and outdoor sports facilities.
California's woes at the center of debate among leading candidates for governor
It's the first time in a generation that California has a wide-open contest for the heavily Democratic state's highest office, with more than 50 names on the ballot.
Defeated Virginia Republicans regroup for last chance fight to save House majority
Virginia's redistricting fight heads to the state Supreme Court after a judge declared ballot language unconstitutional and blocked certification.
Churn in the Statehouse should make for interesting, and crowded, legislative races
With five state senators and 19 House members either retiring or running for other offices in 2026, there will be significant Statehouse turnover come 2027, which means you don’t have to look too far down the ballot to find interesting battles in the primaries.
Trump brings his nonsense about mail-in ballots to Republicans’ Virginia defeat
President Donald Trump has lied for years that elections Republicans lost fair and square were “rigged” by mail-in ballots. On Wednesday, he brought his familiar playbook to the aftermath of the Virginia redistricting referendum Republicans lost on Tuesday.
Virginia follows California, approves ballot measure to redistrict mid-decade
It’s been less than six months since California voters approved a new congressional map that could enable Democrats to flip as many as five House seats now held by Republicans. Now, Virginia is following the same playbook.
Maine’s transgender sports referendum is on the verge of dropping off the ballot
The referendum has enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, but the margin is tight with more challenges pending.
Virginia Ballot Measures Special Election 2026 Live Results
See live results from the 2026 Virginia Ballot Measures Special Election. Follow live outcomes as votes are added up on Election Day.
Live Results: Virginia redistricting special election
There aren’t any candidates on the ballot in Virginia’s statewide special election on Tuesday, but the contest could still decide control of the closely divided U.S. House this fall.
Shaky political science: using "simulated" elections over real-world elections
[Dear DSOS readers – this article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in early December, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting. We found that many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data, and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first three articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report, the second one analyzing a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report, and a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research]. In this fourth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we shine a spotlight on seven studies that were web-hosted and funded by New America’s Political Reform Program and its Electoral Reform Research Group (the ERRG is an ad hoc committee headed by New America’s Political Reform Program and joined by the American Enterprise Institute, the Unite America Institute and Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law). This research consortium has been led by Lee Drutman, senior fellow with New America’s Political Reform Program. These seven studies are simply not credible from any objective standard about how political “science” is supposed to illuminate our understanding of either ranked choice voting or politics in general. The feature that six of these seven studies have in common is that they all used surveys – artificial, simulated elections -- to attempt to say something cogent or interesting about ranked choice voting (RCV) elections. None of them used real world data from actual RCV elections – either the 1000+ elections in the US or the many thousands of elections from places like Australia, Ireland and elsewhere where RCV has been used for 100 years. While a few of these studies conclude with some mixed positives about RCV, our analysis here is content neutral. The idea that, with a political reform like RCV, you can ask respondents in a mock, artificial election to vote with that method, with only the barest of explanation about how RCV works or its likely impacts (i.e. no spoiler candidates, majority winners, voters liberated to pick their favorite candidates, coalition-building), and then ask them their thoughts/reactions about voting in that system, with fake candidates and no real campaigning, no real exposure to an actual election or actual candidates, rests on some very puzzling assumptions. The findings of these seven studies actually are contradicted by the findings from many other studies based on real-world RCV elections. These New America studies also failed to list the real-world RCV studies in their own citations, instead including those studies that reinforced their conclusions. The seven studies featured in this article were chosen because they form a cohesive cohort which precisely illustrates one of the main points of our research paper, namely that using surveys, i.e. artificial elections, or mathematical/theoretical models, instead of real-world data, is in fact “shaky political science.” Below are summaries of our analysis of five of the seven New America studies. You can read our complete analysis of all seven studies at our paper, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting.” Choosing to “Vote As Usual” by Andre Blais, Carolina Plescia, and Semra Sevi. New America. (Blais et al., 2021). This study, web-hosted and funded by New America’s Political Reform Program and its Electoral Reform Research Group, used two surveys in which respondents completed ballots for simulated elections using plurality, approval, RCV and point (Score) voting. In both cases the authors provided the respondents with only minimal explanation of each method. For example, the entire explanation for RCV was “For this vote, rank the candidates from your first to your last choice (you do not need to rank them all). This is called the ranked vote.” That’s it. The study did not provide any context or explanation to survey respondents about why she/he might want to rank multiple candidates. Participants were not even told that ballots would be tabulated using an “instant” runoff, not to mention any description of RCVs ability to eliminate the spoiler effect or liberate voters to rank their favorite candidates without fear of helping the “greater evil” candidate to win. That’s like taking an iPhone back in time to 1970 and asking someone if they like it better than their rotary phone without explaining how it works. Their first survey targeted states that held 2020 Super Tuesday Democratic primaries and used the real candidates’ names in the survey; the second survey used fictitious candidates. In other words, they surveyed respondents who had only ever participated in plurality elections, had no history or background with using RCV or any of the other methods, had no clue about its likely impacts, and did not communicate how the alternative methods would be counted, and then asked them: “How satisfied are you with using each system?” Predictably, the winner was plurality elections, the system used for president, Congress, gubernatorial and state legislative elections – in other words, the method they have been using, year after year, all their voting lives. With so little explanation of RCV and its impacts, this study is simply not credible in discovering anything useful about real-world RCV elections. It merely shows that a basic voter education campaign is needed when adopting a new election system. Additionally, the result contradicts many other post-election surveys following real RCV elections, asking opinions from voters who had just participated in a RCV election, that showed a great deal of satisfaction with RCV (see details on that in Studies 22-25 in our paper, as well as the four studies cited in the review for Study 28). Share Other studies on “satisfaction” and “understanding” make similar mistakes, in terms of basing their surveys on inadequate explanation to respondents and lack of education about context. How could any survey ever hope to measure accurately, in essence simulate a real-world election, without actual campaigning candidates, the media writing about those candidates, organizations endorsing candidates and voters being inundated with crucial information? More than anything, what these “studies” based on surveys show is that if you ask voters about something they don’t know very much about, and fail to adequately educate them, their responses will unsurprisingly reflect their confusion. Equally puzzling is that New America’s Electoral Reform Research Group, headed by political scientist Lee Drutman, found this to be a credible enough study that they not only published it but highlighted it in Drutman’s own discussion of research related to ranked choice voting. This pattern was repeated in study after study featured by New America’s Electoral Reform Research Group. For example in Ranked-Choice Voting and Political Expression: Voter Guides Narrow the Gap between Informed and Uninformed Citizens by Cheryl Boudreau, Jonathan Colner, and Scott MacKenzie, the researchers based their analysis on a survey which found that respondents who were asked to vote in a simulated RCV election, with minimal explanation of RCV or how it works, displayed less evidence of being informed about how to use RCV effectively, with the least informed voters ranking fewer candidates. As pointed out under the study above, in a real election voters are informed by a wide variety of methods, including public education by the election administration, by interested political groups, the media, and the candidates themselves who benefit from voters being aware of how to vote in the new system. In Support for Ranked-Choice Voting across Race and Partisanship by Joseph Anthony, David C. Kimball, Jack Santucci and Jamil Scott, the researchers used respondents from different parties and races voting in simulated plurality and RCV elections, who indicated their satisfaction with each voting method. Instead of using real world election results, the authors fell back on the easy, armchair and less reliable academic research methodology of making up mock elections. As with the other studies, little explanation was given of how RCV works or what its implications might be (electing majority winners or eliminating spoilers, for example). Unsurprisingly, this study found that respondents were not very satisfied with RCV. However, when the authors added an explanation that RCV has a tendency to elect more women and people of color, they found that this greater explanation increased the preference for RCV. The more voters were familiar with it, and the more they understood potential positive impacts – surprise! -- the more they were open to switching away from the status quo. Of note, the results from this study are thoroughly contradicted by a number of other studies whose data was obtained from real RCV elections with real voters. Those studies show a great deal of satisfaction with RCV. More “fake election” research An interesting wrinkle on this “research by fake elections” approach, which only served to illustrate how unreliable such “research” can become, was taken in Ranked-Choice Voting, Runoff, and Democracy: Insights from Maine and Other U.S. States by Joseph Cerrone and Cynthia McClintock_,_ also web-hosted and funded by New America’s ERRG. It gets high marks for creativity, but an eye-roll for thinking this could possibly add anything meaningful to our understanding of real world RCV elections. This study tried to determine whether RCV, plurality or two-round runoff elections provided greater voter satisfaction and acceptance of election results. To determine that, the authors conducted a survey asking if voters were satisfied with a fictional newspaper report of an election, with three different versions given to respondents – plurality, runoff and RCV, with variations of Republican/Democrat winners and variations of “come-from-behind” winners,” i.e. candidates not initially in first place but who win the “runoff.” Again, a minimal explanation of RCV or how it works was given, and the survey showed that respondents had the greatest unfamiliarity with RCV than the other methods. The unsurprising result? Respondents were much more satisfied with “come-from-behind” victories in a traditional two-round runoff election than in RCV, even though RCV is also a runoff system but with a single round of counting. Interestingly, the dissatisfaction with RCV disappeared for those who were more familiar with RCV. In fact, among those respondents who were “very familiar” with RCV, they were equally satisfied with RCV, runoff and plurality. Surprise, surprise. Again, what this study revealed, more than anything, is not only the inadequacy of the explanation for RCV given by the authors of this study, but the failure of the research format itself, thinking that such an artificial mock election could somehow simulate what actually happens in the real world in a real RCV election. Those four studies reviewed above are fitting examples of inadequate and shaky political “science.” Other studies reviewed in our paper from the New America/Electoral Reform Research Group cohort which also used mock elections included: Ranked-Choice Voting is an Acquired Taste by Joseph Anthony and David C. Kimball. New America. (Anthony et al., 2021). Ranked-Choice Voting is No Refuge for Extreme Candidates by Melissa Baker. New America. (Baker, 2021). Also included in this New America cohort is Does Ranked-Choice Voting Reduce Racial Polarization? by Yuki Atsusaka and Theodore Landsman, which actually did use real-world election results data but applied an odd and unconventional methodology to the data which relied on shaky assumptions and non-real-world scenarios that were too divorced from reality. To determine levels of “racially polarized voting,” the researchers imagined “ethnic parties,” by which they mean political parties for each ethnic group, which was especially odd since the election data they were using came from nonpartisan RCV races. But then they made an even odder assumption, namely that since race and ethnic characteristics of studied voters were not available, the authors tried to infer that information based on who voters selected and the racial make-up of voters in each district. This amounted to little more than vague and ambiguous guesswork dressed up with a bunch of mathematical equations used to give it a veneer of scientific appearance. Indeed, it seemed to assume racial polarization in order to prove racial polarization. Based on this questionable methodology, the authors concluded that RCV doesn’t reduce racial polarization. But the premise of this study missed an obvious reality: since RCV incentivizes more candidates to run and can result in more diverse fields of candidates, one would expect more racially-polarized voting in voters’ top rankings, not less, because more voters would have someone on that ballot who represents their racial or ethnic identity and more freedom to vote for their real first choice. By encouraging more diverse candidates and eliminating the spoiler effect, RCV facilitates voting for a favorite candidate of your own race and then selecting a second choice with the best likelihood of winning. The real measure is what voters do with their additional rankings – do they consider other candidates and vote “for the best of the rest”? This study didn’t tell us anything useful about that. But readily available data shows this is common in real RCV elections, and candidates act on this knowledge by engaging with voters outside their racial group. So the authors of this study failed to consider or account for what actually happens in real-world elections, and their conclusions are tainted by this failure. New America has contributed a great deal over the past 2.5 decades to our understanding of many policy areas, including politics and political reform (full disclosure: Steven Hill, one of the authors of this article and of the “Shaky Political Science” research paper and series, is a former senior fellow and former director of New America’s political reform program, 2005-2010). So it was especially disappointing that New America funded and published such a large batch of dubious studies about ranked choice voting. The stated praiseworthy goal of its Electoral Reform Research Group was to inspire new academic research about ranked choice voting that would shed light and help the public better understand the impacts of RCV. Instead, the ERRG research did just the opposite. It produced dubious research that created more confusion and misinformation. In so doing, New America’s political reform program contributed to “shaky political science.” Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS, a reader-supported digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe
Virginia voters to decide whether to allow a new Democratic-drawn map for the midterms
A constitutional amendment is on the ballot Tuesday that would pave the way for Democrats to enact a congressional map that’s designed to net them up to four seats.
Legislation that could lead to faster election results advances
The Pa. House State Government Committee has advanced a bill that would allow election officials to begin opening and tallying mail-in ballots before Election Day, speeding election result reporting.
DOJ demands 865K Detroit ballots, threatening possible legal action
Michigan and the Trump DOJ clash over a demand for 865,000 ballots from Wayne County, with state officials calling the request baseless and political.
Michigan attorney general rejects Trump administration ballot request amid broader push to challenge elections
Michigan’s attorney general is rejecting an effort by the US Justice Department to obtain ballots and other voting materials from the Detroit area, a target of the Trump administration’s efforts to probe elections in states that the president falsely claims he won in 2020.
Campaigns raise money for and against girls' sports, parents' rights issues on Nov. ballot
We are already gearing up for a busy midterm election that will include at least two statewide issues on Washington’s ballot.Let's Go Washington collected signa
DOJ demands Detroit-area 2024 ballots, escalating election scrutiny
DOJ official Harmeet K. Dhillon wrote that she is seeking ballots to investigate election law compliance. Democratic state officials call the request baseless.
WA GOP leader says he has box of ballots found next to Renton dumpster
The United States Postal Inspection Service and the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office are investigating the ballots, which came to light on social media.
Trump's Department of Justice demands Wayne County's 2024 ballots
A assistant attorney general sent a letter to Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett demanding the county turn over its 2024 paper ballots.
Colorado’s lawmakers lie on the ballot, again, to take away TABOR
I know this will shock you, but the system is rigged. Maybe not in the conspiracy-theory, tinfoil-hat way. In the simple, obvious, right-in-front-of-your-face way: politicians get to play by rules you don’t. And every now and then they get so brazen about it, you have to stop and admire the hustle. We Coloradans have been […]
Why some Virginia voters find redistricting ballot question confusing
When Donte Jiggetts first learned about the special election to determine whether Virginia will move forward with plans for new Congressional districts, he initially found the question confusing.
Purplish: Who’s on the primary ballot and what did it take for them to get there
Party diehards got their say on who they want to see on the ballot. The Purplish team breaks down who made it through and what it means to pick candidates this way.
A special election in Virginia could have wider impact. Why it matters.
A congressional map is on the ballot in Virginia.
Southwest Florida leaders skeptical if property tax cut makes statewide ballot, or if it can pass from there
Matt Caldwell and Bob Rommel talked about the state of debate and political viability of a massive tax cut.
Despite late-night maneuvering, agriculture bond fails enactment again
A final push for a $45 million agriculture bond was still not quite enough to get the legislation past the finish line and on the November ballot. Instead, the bond is stuck between chambers as the Maine Legislature ends the session.
Transgender sports participation measure pushed to November ballot
The proposal would prevent transgender students assigned male at birth to play in girls sports or use girls private spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms.
Presidential Downballot Losses: An Updated History and a Look Ahead to Trump’s Second Term
Since World War II, presidents have consistently presided over losses for their party in down-ballot offices—in the Senate, the House, governorships and state legislatures.
Planned Parenthood endorses Mills in Maine U.S. Senate race
Mills is in a three-way Democratic primary on the June 9 ballot. She faces Sullivan oyster farmer and veteran Graham Platner and former federal official David Costello of Brunswick.
Gambling companies funnel money into ballot measures to legalize online sports betting – and to individual candidates
As popular online gambling platforms funnel millions into the campaign to legalize online sports betting in Nebraska, some companies are also making significant contributions to individual campaigns.
Postal Service union launches ad campaign promoting mail voting as Trump seeks to limit it
The 30-second message features a variety of voters, among them a busy farmer and a flight attendant, explaining why they cast their ballots by mail.
What happens to the California governor's race after Swalwell's exit?
In a crowded race with no clear leader in the heavily Democratic state, Rep. Eric Swalwell's exit presents an opportunity for his one-time rivals to pick off former supporters just weeks before mail ballots go to voters.
Public hearing set for Tuesday on trans ballot initiative
The measure requires schools to designate all sports teams as male, female or co-ed. It also requires public schools to maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms and shower rooms for girls and boys.
Early voting begins this week. What positions are on the ballot?
Shelby County will effectively have a new set of elected officials after the election; many current representatives are term-limited or seeking other offices.
Polling stations close in pivotal Hungary election that could unseat long-time Prime Minister Orbán
Hungarians cast ballots Sunday in Europe's most consequential election this year, setting a record turnout in a vote that could unseat populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power.
Early results in Hungary's election show opposition party leading and Prime Minister Orbán's trailing
Hungarians cast ballots Sunday in Europe's most consequential election this year, setting a record turnout in a vote that could unseat populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power.
Pastors Scott Bottoms, Victor Marx win spots in Colorado GOP’s gubernatorial primary at party assembly
Two pastors from Colorado Springs qualified Saturday for the Republican gubernatorial primary ballot at the Colorado GOP’s state assembly in Pueblo in a party meeting that dragged late into the night. State Rep. Scott Bottoms, who is known as one of the legislature’s most conservative members, won top line on the June ballot, while missionary […]
Postal Service, Under Pressure, Now Faces Trump’s Mail Ballot Order
President Trump’s executive order, which has been challenged as unconstitutional, would limit the Postal Service to sending only the ballots of voters deemed eligible.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
Maine group asks for changes in ballot language
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Group behind transgender school sports referendum opposes drafted ballot question wording
The group 'Protect Girls Sports in Maine' is taking issue with how ballot question is worded, arguing it is "not dutifully faithful to the proposed legislative text and has departed from the most critical language."
Mariano urges business leaders to make a deal on income tax cut
House Speaker Ron Mariano appealed to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce on Thursday for help in preventing the tax-cut question from reaching the ballot.
Supporters object to trans sports referendum ballot language
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No Charges for Wisconsin Mayor Who Removed Ballot Drop Box in 2024
A special prosecutor said a review of the incident found there was not sufficient evidence to charge Doug Diny, the mayor of Wausau.
California Supreme Court orders GOP sheriff to pause election probe and preserve seized ballots
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State election dispute on political speech comes to Supreme Court on interim docket
Lawyers for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, as well as county election officials, urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to let them go ahead with a ballot that does […]
Wausau Mayor Doug Diny won’t face charges over ballot drop box removal case
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MAGA’s favorite strongman might be on the brink of defeat
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Update, safeguard Colorado’s mail ballot with voter ID
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‘A blatant political ploy’: California sheriff’s seizure of referendum ballots sets off alarm bells
Chad Bianco of Riverside county obtained warrants to seize ballots cast for state’s successful redistricting referendum
Public comment open on wording of Maine transgender sports referendum question
The question will appear on the November ballot unless the bill is enacted by the Legislature as written.
Gov. DeSantis signs measure shifting Naples Airport Authority control to voters
All 5 seats will appear on the ballot beginning with the 2026 General Election.
This GOP candidate seized a half-million ballots and says he may do it again
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is running for California governor as a Republican, tried to review ballots despite election officials reaffirming the results.
Voters may see unfamiliar names on their primary ballots. Here's why
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Ballots cast Tuesday, counted later: Surfside mayoral runoff results pushed to April 28, Judge rules
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Emily Gregory to be sworn in for HD 87 seat Tuesday at Palm Beach Gardens City Hall
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Column: Trump's cries of cheating on mail-in ballots defy logic
President Trump and MAGA Republicans are hallucinating or outright lying about widespread election fraud.
Voters in Georgia have moved on from Marjorie Taylor Greene. On Tuesday, they finally fill her seat
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Is it time for both parties to bail on Colorado’s political nominating system?
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Why the controversy with mail-in ballots?
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St. John's Health 'likely' to ask voters for property tax bump
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N.Y. attorney general, other AGs sue over Trump mail-in voting executive order
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Colorado sues Trump administration, calling new election order ‘unconstitutional’
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Democratic-led states sue to stop Trump's mail-in ballots executive order
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Poll: Dems on statewide ballot lead in Palm Beach, buoyed by disdain for Donald Trump
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Democrats sue to block Trump's executive order targeting mail ballots
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Maine high court hears ranked choice voting arguments
In 2017, the justices “concluded that ranked-choice voting was inconsistent with the constitutional requirement that the winners of those elections must be determined by ‘a plurality of’ all votes returned,” according to the AG’s office.
Democrats sue to block Trump's executive order targeting mail ballots
Democrats have sued to block President Donald Trump’s latest executive order restricting mail voting
Cannabis businesses sue to block Mass. anti-pot ballot question
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Colorado leaders say Trump’s executive order targeting mail voting violates state election authority
Colorado leaders swiftly condemned President Donald Trump’s new executive order issued Tuesday, arguing that its creation of a national voter‑eligibility list and new limits on mail voting violate states’ constitutional authority to run their own elections. Jefferson County Clerk Amanda Gonzalez called the order another attack on Americans’ access to the ballot but was confident […]
‘It’s not showing up at the ballot box’: Dem Rep. dismisses poll that just 25% of voters say Dems have the right priorities
Trump signs executive order limiting mail-in ballots; California leaders say they'll fight
President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday purporting to place new federal controls on voting by mail in states such as California.
Trump signs order asserting federal control of mail-in ballots
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Trump signs order on mail ballots, escalating election overhaul push
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday aimed at tightening mail-in voting rules nationwide that would direct his administration to create a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state.
Transgender sports participation initiative challenged
Challengers say if the errors are corrected, the petitioners would fall below the 67,682 signatures need to qualify for the November ballot.
How local GOP officials are embracing Trump’s tactics to hunt for voter fraud
Local Republican officials across the country are taking aggressive steps to probe prior elections — from seizing ballots to making sweeping claims of non-citizens on the voter rolls — that mimic actions from the Trump administration’s hunt for 2020 voter fraud.
New factories and supersized Obamacare premiums: North Carolina considers what Trump has wrought
The president’s health care policies are on the ballot in a crucial Senate race.