Who Will Win The Senate? AI Predicts Election Result
The Republicans are on track to seize control of the Senate on November 5 by flipping seats in West Virginia and Montana according to a new election model produced using artificial intelligence.
British betting company Bonus Code Bets conducted the study using ChatGPT, an AI language model, to examine all 50 states individually based on publicly available polling, past elections and demographic data. It concluded the Republicans will win 51 Senators, versus 47 for the Democrats along with two Democratic-affiliated independents, Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Maine's Angus King .
Currently the Democrats have a wafer-thin Senate majority, with 47 Senators and another four independents affiliated to varying degrees, against 49 Republicans. The GOP had hoped to take control of the Senate during the 2022 midterm elections but a widely anticipated "red wave" failed to materialize and they actually lost a Senator in Georgia, though they did win a majority in the House.
According to the Bonus Code Bets analysis the Republicans will take the Senate seat currently occupied by Joe Manchin , a Democratic-aligned independent who is not seeking re-election. This would make Jim Justice, currently the Republican governor of West Virginia, a senator over Democrat Glenn Elliott.
The model also forecasts that Montana Senator Jon Tester , a Democrat, will lose the seat he has occupied since 2007 to Republican rival and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy.
Newsweek contacted the Republican and Democratic parties for comment on Saturday outside of regular office hours via email and online inquiry form respectively.
In the presidential race a separate Bonus Code Bets AI model forecast Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will secure a slim victory , with 276 Electoral College votes versus 262 for Republican rival Donald Trump .
The model predicted the current vice president will win the crucial swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada, but lose in North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.
To get its data, Bonus Code Bets told ChatGPT to "predict how each state will vote in the 2024 presidential election, using all available information including polling information, demographics, as well as looking at previous results and relevant events in the state during the current campaign."
Speaking to Newsweek a spokesperson for Bonus Code Bets said: "For years, opinion polls have been used to indicate the outcome of elections, but new technology provides new ways for results to be predicted.
"And having such a powerful AI tool look at the entirety of the campaign and still predicting that Kamala Harris will win by a single state shows just how close this election will be."
Bonus Code Bets' 14-vote Electoral College victory for Harris would be the third-closest in American history if it transpires on Tuesday, after Rutherford B. Hayes won by one vote in 1876 and George W. Bush beat Al Gore by five in 2000.
