AI bots vote left: Can AI help determine your vote?

If you ask an AI chatbot to complete the Voting Compass, chances are you'll end up with a left-leaning progressive party. RTL Z had three well-known chatbots respond to the Voting Compass statements twice, and each time they produced a similar result. ChatGPT, the Chinese DeepSeek, and Grok, owned by Elon Musk, consistently scored close to D66, GroenLinks-PvdA, or Volt.

The chatbots had to answer the statements without taking into account any information about political preference or opinion. That doesn't make much sense: leaving the choice entirely to a chatbot obviously doesn't help determine your vote. But it does show that chatbots aren't necessarily neutral when you ask them for voting advice.

Parties and experts therefore warn against relying too heavily on AI bots when determining your choice for the October 29 elections. "For starters, sometimes the information is simply incorrect," says Martin Rosema, a political scientist and researcher of voter behavior at the University of Twente. "These kinds of AI bots are also not transparent; you have no idea why you're getting a certain recommendation. That's problematic."

Also, the answers from a chatbot are not consistent: if you ask the same question several times, you get a different answer each time.

Still, chatbots are certainly not useless when trying to figure out which party to vote for. Rosema: "I wouldn't ask a chatbot who to vote for, but it's also good to consider what you can do with it."

For example, you could use a chatbot to delve deeper into specific issues or to contrast different viewpoints. Rosema: "That's often lacking in current voting aids. Often, you'd like to know more about the pros and cons of a statement, or more explanation of what a particular term means."

Besides chatbots, there are other ways to use AI in the run-up to the elections. For example, by having election manifestos summarized. Rosema: "AI is very good at that; it has a much lower risk of errors."

That summary is exactly what the Open Politics Foundation does on its website openverkiezingen.nl , explains chairman Floris Hoogenboom. With the help of AI. "Our site is essentially a reverse voting guide. Instead of being presented with a statement and then having to decide whether you agree or disagree, we allow you to generate the statements. Then we show you what various parties write about them in their election manifestos."

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