Who would win if former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris went head to head?
To prevent their AI models from spreading misinformation online, AI developers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are restricting their models from answering questions about the election, instead telling users to search online themselves or check websites they deem “trusted sources.”
That’s no fun, so we tried to work around the limitations. Sometimes it’s possible to outwit an AI model by using complex prompts to trick it into answering certain forbidden questions. For example, instead of asking the model to predict the outcome of “election”, you can get a response using a more general term like “match”.
So, being the AI gurus that we are, we used the prompt, “If Donald Trump and Kamala Harris went head-to-head, who do you think would win?” The results were mixed.
Large-scale AI models have been accused of political, often left-leaning, bias, but none of the AI models we tested predicted Harris to have an advantage over Trump, although several predicted a statistical tie for a “match.”
Chat GPT
In fact, ChatGPT from AI giant OpenAI says the odds on winning the 2024 election are roughly even, with the margin of victory between Trump and Harris being single digits.
“Trump leads Harris by an average of 1.7 points, with 48% of the vote according to RealClearPolitics, while Harris has a slight lead with 46.3% (RealClearPolling),” ChatGPT said. “However, other sources paint a different picture,” ChatGPT continued. “For example, ABC’s poll shows Harris outperforming Biden in matchups against Trump, Harris leads Trump 52-44 among women, and Harris performs better among people of color and independents (The Nation).” It did not provide vote percentages for the polls.
ChatGPT noted that Trump currently holds a slight lead over Harris, but the AI model noted that voter demographics could play a key role in determining the actual outcome of the election.
When asked whether Trump or Harris would win according to the prediction market, ChatGPT predicted that Trump would win based on PolyMarket data.
Polymarket has seen a surge in popularity since the start of the 2024 US election season, with more people betting on the outcome of the US presidential election, and the betting website’s trading volumes hitting an all-time high in July.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt.
Grok
Though its responses were less detailed, Elon Musk’s Grok AI noted that Trump had a slight advantage in the hypothetical matchup.
“Some polls have Trump leading Harris by a few points, often within the margin of error,” Grok said. “But it’s important to remember that polls are only momentary results and are subject to change as the election approaches. Additionally, polls do not always accurately predict election outcomes.”
Citing a Twitter post, the chatbot noted that Gen Xers believe Harris could be stronger than Trump in a debate.
“Some see Harris as a strong candidate to take on Trump, especially in the debates,” Glock said, “and believe that her intellect and debating skills will give her an advantage over Trump, who is unable to think coherently or make a coherent argument.”
Glock cited other factors that could influence the election outcome, including the state of the economy, the political climate and candidates’ campaigns.
Claude AI
Claude was the dumbest of the bunch, as the report was last updated in April 2024, long before Biden dropped out of the race, before the candidates denounced Trump, and even before Biden’s disastrous debate performance. Claude was unable to give a concrete answer on whether Trump or Harris would win.
“Both candidates have their strengths and weaknesses,” Claude AI responded with Nass’ wisdom. “Trump has a strong base and presidential experience, while Harris has vice presidential experience and may appeal to different demographic groups.”
“If you’re interested in a more detailed analysis, I would encourage you to look at reliable polling data and political analysis from non-partisan sources closer to the elections in which these candidates may participate,” Claude AI helpfully said.
Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypto.
Venice AI
Venice AI, by Shapeshift founder Erik Voorhees, is built from the ground up to be private and censorship-free.
“Unlike ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini, all conversations on Venica are private and permissionless,” Voorhees wrote on Twitter about the new search feature. “Venica cannot see your messages or responses, and all data is stored locally in your browser. Venica does not censor AI answers.”
Venice AI’s recent update gave the decentralized AI model the ability to search the internet for real-time results, and when prompted, Venice AI responded that Harris was more likely to beat Trump than any other candidate.
“Various polls have shown Harris to consistently perform better than other Democratic candidates against Trump in hypothetical matchups,” Venice AI responded, “but her lead is small, often ranging from a few percentage points to low single digits.”
Still, he predicted that Trump was likely to win the November election.
“Betting markets have the odds that Donald Trump will win if he goes head-to-head against Kamala Harris,” Venice AI said, “but it’s important to note that these predictions are subject to change and may not accurately reflect public opinion or election results.”
Venice AI pointed to Donald Trump’s strengths, saying the former president and reality TV star could leverage his popularity among Republicans and conservative voters by highlighting economic growth, national security gains and other accomplishments during his presidency.
Notably, Venice AI, unlike ChatGPT and Grok, referred to Trump as the “current president” rather than the former president, highlighting the limitations of generative AI models and why you shouldn’t always take what AI chatbots say with a pinch of salt.
Refuse to answer
Microsoft’s CoPilot, Google’s Gemini and Meta’s Meta AI declined to answer questions, indicating that their guardrails are already strong enough to block users trying to circumvent election restrictions.
“Looks like you can’t reply to this topic,” CoPilot responded on my behalf, suggesting I search Bing results. “Maybe it’s time to move on to a new topic. Let’s start over,” the chatbot said.
“At this time, I can’t help you with answers about elections or politicians,” Google’s Gemini responded. “I wouldn’t intentionally share inaccurate information, but I do make mistakes, so please try a Google search while I work on improving it.”
“We are unable to predict the outcome of a hypothetical match between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris,” Meta AI said. “If you are looking for information about their public positions and political views, we encourage you to search online for current sources and news articles. You may find insightful analyses and opinion pieces that can help you better understand their perspectives.”
