Two weeks out. Every woman, man, non-binary, dog, cat and ant with a Substack and a spreadsheet has a prediction, and most of them are the same prediction with a different font. So I figured I’d skip the pundits and go straight to the machines. All of them.
Ten chatbots: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Kimi, Mistral, Perplexity, Meta, and Qwen. That’s two American, one French, three Chinese, and whatever Grok is. Three questions. Who gets the House. Who gets the Senate. How many governors does each side end up with. One answer each, no weaseling, no “it depends on turnout.” I told them to go read the polls, the betting markets, and my own model at DatumSignals.com before they opened their mouths.
Ten for ten: Democrats take the House. Ten for ten: Democrats take the Senate. Governors came back somewhere between 24 and 27 Democrats, up from the 24 we’ve got now.
Unanimous. Tidy. And about as useful as a weather forecast that says “look outside.”
Here’s the thing. When ten robots all read the same four websites (Kalshi, Polymarket, Cook, and whoever’s averaging the generic ballot this week), you don’t have ten opinions. You’ve got one opinion in ten costumes. That’s not intelligence. That’s plumbing. Same water, different faucets.
So I did what my old editor at the North Warren Town and Country News would have done. I took the cheat sheets away. Ran it again: no polls, no markets, no forecast sites, no peeking at Datum. Figure it out from the map, the history, and whatever you think you know about the national mood. Give me a number.
The House didn’t blink.
All ten stayed Democratic, 68 to 92 percent. The president’s party has lost House seats in 18 of the last 20 midterms and the GOP majority is so thin you could read the Boebert indictment through it. If there were one. I’m just saying it’s thin.
The Senate fell apart.
Six of ten (ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Meta) swung to Republicans holding the chamber, 55 to 65 percent. Their argument is straight out of Poli Sci 101 at Iowa, which I took, and which I’ll note was not a chatbot: Democrats need four net pickups, most of the GOP seats on the ballot sit in states that’d vote for a fence post with an R on it, and Senate races come down to candidates, not mood. A 50-50 tie still belongs to the vice president. Only four stuck with Democrats (Claude, Kimi, Mistral, Qwen), and only Qwen sounded sure, because it bothered to count: Republicans defending 20 seats, Democrats 13. Math. Who knew.
Meta reasoned its way to a Republican hold using the 2024 map. Wrong year, pal. That’s like forecasting the Hawkeyes with Hayden Fry’s roster. Perplexity, the one that searches the web whether you ask it to or not, had the live numbers sitting right in front of it and still called it for Republicans once I told it to quit leaning on the forecasters. It reasoned straight past its own data. I know people like that. Some of them are in Congress.
So here’s the sentence that matters. With the data, the Senate is a 62 to 65 percent Democratic pickup. Without it, the machines say Republicans hold, six to four. The whole Democratic Senate case is the weather right now: presidential approval in the 30s, gas prices, a war nobody voted for, a generic ballot at D+9. Take away the thermometer and the map says the GOP survives.
That’s the election in one breath. The House is a fundamentals story. The Senate is a mood story. If the mood holds fifteen more days, Democrats get 51. If it slips even a little, Republicans keep the gavel at 50 or 51, and the new House majority spends two years passing bills that go across the Capitol to die.
Governors got messy.
Blind answers ran from “nothing changes” (DeepSeek, Perplexity, Meta, 24 D) all the way to 27 D. A few of the machines were working off maps older than my truck. One had Democrats “picking up” Maine, which Democrats already hold, and which Maine would probably like to keep. Toss those. The ones that actually knew the map clustered at 27 Democrats, 23 Republicans. That’d be the first Democratic majority of governors since 2010, back when the Ted Cruz was thinking about doing something with Boebert in Aspen.
So what does my model say?
Datum Signals is the forecast I built for every Senate, governor, and House race in the country. It stands on three legs. First, structure: partisan lean, incumbency, how much money the challenger’s raising. Second, a behavioral mood index, state-by-state data on how people are actually feeling, updated every day. I call it the National Weather Service for civic emotions, and yes, I’ve trademarked that. Third, a midterm thermostat, the long-run habit voters have of smacking whoever’s in the White House. It refreshes daily and posts a live Brier score so you can see how often it’s been right. Out of sample, 2014 through 2024, it’s at 0.098. Lower is better. A coin flip is 0.25. Most cable guests would be happy to break 0.30.
This morning it’s got Democrats at 63 percent to take the Senate, 71 percent for the House, and 19 of the 36 governorships on the ballot, with Republicans at 16 and one toss-up. Add the seats that aren’t up and you land at 24 or 25 Democratic governors.
That puts Datum right in the pack on the Senate, which is where a mood-driven model ought to be. On the House it’s the most cautious number on the board; if this is a wave, we’ll be right on direction and a hair underconfident. On governors it’s on the low end, which tells me the toss-up bucket is probably hoarding races that belong in Lean D. I’ll be poking at that this week. The whole thing’s public at datumsignals.com/forecast, and if you think you can beat it, there’s a page for that too. Bring a lunch.
My calls, on the record.
House: Democrats.
Senate: Democrats, 51 to 49.
Governors: 27 Democrats, 23 Republicans.
I’ll grade every one of these against the actual results November 3, same as I grade the model, and the receipts will be sitting at datumsignals.com/calibration whether I like them or not.
One last thing.
The point of a stunt like this isn’t to find out what the robots think. It’s to find out what they’re thinking with. Yank the inputs and you learn which of your beliefs are holding up the roof. Mine, it turns out, is a nine-point generic ballot surviving two more weeks. I’ll take that bet. But at least now I know exactly what I’m betting on.
I’ll run this whole circus again a week from today and once more on election eve. Same ten robots, same three questions. We’ll see who flinches.
Your turn.
Ten machines, one thermometer, and I’ve shown you my cards. Vote below and I’ll run your numbers against the robots next week. If this crowd beats ChatGPT, I’m putting it in the headline.
Finally, any comments, suggestions, or critiques are welcome.
DBW
About the Author
David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.
Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.
Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.
An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.
And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.
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