A.I. Political Manipulation. Political Machinations: The 2026 Midterms May Be A.I.-Manipulated

The recent Democratic Party mayoral primary election of Zohran Mamdani in New York City does not bode well. It illustrates that the Hard Left Democrats now have a stranglehold on New York City politics. I suspect the same for all of the East and West Coast Blue States, as well as Illinois. I heard it suggested on talk radio that artificial intelligence (A.I.) was used to exert influence on the New York mayoral primary via concerted social media bot traffic. This may have swayed “on the fence” voters toward Mamdani. I’m curious to see if this manipulation can be documented. If it can indeed be proven, then that won’t surprise me.

I don’t need to elaborate on the radical socialist politics of Zohran Mamdani. That has already been well-documented. And, see, for example: Mamdani: We Must ‘Buy Up Private Housing’ to Convert into Communes. And consider his self-professed racism. If he is the model for the upcoming batch of Democratic candidates that will run in the next midterm elections, then we are in serious trouble. I can foresee that they will mostly be somewhere between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Chairman Mao, on the political spectrum.

Even back in August, 2023, a U.S. public opinion poll conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School showed that 83.4% of voters expressed some level of concern regarding A.I. being used to spread misinformation in an election race at the time.

Congressional Races

I will go out on a limb and predict that A.I. will be used in an attempt to shift both the U.S. House and Senate to Democrat majorities, in both the 2026 midterm elections and in the 2028 general elections. The Democrats desperately need to regain majorities to remain relevant. Voter verification laws are tightening — especially in Red States — but that won’t prevent election tampering if A.I. is used to synthetically sway voters. On paper, those will all be “legitimately registered” voters placing “legal” votes, but their thought processes will be under the subtle outside influence of A.I..

I also predict that the Democratic and Republican pendulum swings in Presidential politics will get more and more severe and retaliatory. The Biden-Harris Administration set the precedent for these big pendulum swings. That was repeated — and even amplified — when Donald Trump began his second term, in January. He knew that he had only four years, so he pulled out all the stops. From here on, each presidential administration switch between the two major parties will begin with a complete reversal of nearly all of the executive orders of the preceding administration. When the pendulum swings back to Blue, there could be an overt move — one that will resemble a coup — that will be typified by the issuance of hundreds of new executive orders, governmental reorganizations, mass firings of any civil servants who are perceived as “allied with the opposition,” and perhaps politically-motivated tax audits and contrived prosecutions. Beware. The Dems will see it as “Payback time.”

There is another trend that will reach a crescendo: At the state level, the political and demographic divide between Red States and Blue States will become even more pronounced. Conservative Red Staters who live in Liberal Blue States and vice versa will feel so stifled that they will migrate between states in larger and larger numbers. I’ve been writing about this trend for many years. I expect this to accelerate in the late 2020s. If you live in a Blue State, then please seriously consider relocating soon, while you can still do so with all of your wealth intact. If you wait too long, then you might end up as a refugee, with just a few assets. I am not kidding about this!

The addition of overt A.I. manipulation ties in to several early 21st-century trends that I’ve already warned about in SurvivalBlog.

De-Ranking and De-Banking

A.I. may also soon be used to de-rank and de-bank anyone seen as an enemy of a sitting presidential administration. It won’t be individual politicians or even political party bosses doing this. Instead, it will be politically-motivated billionaire technocrats who will unleash their A.I. tools on the electorate. Many of these manipulations will be subtle and hard to trace. Folks with blogs and vlogs and small news aggregation sites will see a gradual decline in their traffic They will get fewer and fewer site visits because the algorithms driving search engines will have graylisted or blacklisted any sites that show “symptoms” of: conservatism. Which symptoms? Let’s start with traditional Christian faith, traditional family values, and gun ownership. (In essence, it all comes down to God and Guns.)

Gradually, A.I. will produce search engine results and “feeds” that direct users to more liberal alternatives, or to mindless mainstream entertainment sites and A.I.-generated pablum sites. These sites will relentlessly churn out dreadful schlock content with no human creative input whatsoever. Already, at least a third of what you see on YouTube is A.I.-generated. These videos have graphics that don’t properly match the narration. And the narration itself is all A.I.-generated junk.

Social media is likewise already being manipulated, via A.I. algorithms. This goes far beyond just deepfakes. Presently, that manipulation is mostly to encourage people to sign up for paid services or to buy particular products. But what will happen when the A.I. manipulation gets fully political? Imagine a new “improved” Internet experience, where over the course of years, everyone’s feeds gradually shifts toward content that encourages statism, consumerism, globalism, LGBTQ-ism, environmentalism, socialism, moral relativism, gender dysphoria, pantheism, and the Democrat Party Line. This will be something akin to every radio station in the country becoming an NPR affiliate. Most of the Generally Dumb public (GDP) won’t recognize that the shift has occurred. They’ll get slowly sucked in, until the majority of the sheeple will start repeating the same gobbledygook. And all that it will take is 51% success, and the socialists will win. It might take a century, but if the tech overlords have it their way, nearly all of the states will end up like California, with Democrats holding supermajorities in their state legislatures.

In the upcoming midterm elections, I fear that A.I. could be used in several nefarious ways. For example:

Deepfake A.I.-generated audio and video, to impugn the reputation of political opponents, falsely placing them in compromising situations, or making irrational statements.
A.I. Agents that spuriously refer themselves as “candidates” or “campaign advisors.”
A.I.-generated campaign robocalls,
A.I. used to generate stock or commodity market profits (or other profits), to finance political campaigns.
A.I.-generated fake polls and fake pollsters asking questions, in telephone polls..
Generative A.I. used in creating campaign ads.
A.I. bots used to flood online polls. (Or used to call in to shift telephone polls.)
Sophisticated A.I.-generated ads to spread disinformation /messaging, likely with Iron Eyes Cody-level emotional impact.
A.I. chat “friends” who subtly encourage their human targets to vote a particular way.
A.I. avatars being used as stand-ins for candidates.
A.I.-generated political messages, campaign ad artwork, memes, and political cartoons becoming preferred over those written by human campaign consultants.
A.I. used to rewrite party platforms, to give them wider acceptance.
“Death by a thousand cuts”-style attacks on transportation — to keep voters of an opposing party away from the polls. These could be made to appear to be mere coincidences.
Custom-tailored A.I. written campaign speeches/writings directed to particular demographic groups or neighborhoods.
A.I.-enabled cyberattacks on the opposing candidate’s campaign computer/server infrastructure, or on media outlets.

A Pendulum Freeze?

Once A.I. is fully employed in manipulating elections, there is the possibility of an overt pendulum freeze — most likely at the Blue (left) end of the pendulum swing. That would be our nation’s Allende Moment. That is not a pretty prospect, since a hard left pendulum freeze would likely trigger a civil war. When votes don’t count — or votes are manipulated — it is safe to predict that an enraged minority will attempt to vote from the rooftops. (Read: Ballistically.)

As I’ve written before, I predict that a Second U.S. Civil War would in many ways resemble the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War. And, for the record, I’ve already made it very clear that I dread a second civil war. If it happens, it will be ugly, and remembered for many generations.