han 40 percent believe it will "fundamentally transform" the future of their profession. If these emerging AI tools become popular in the midterms, it won't just be a few candidates from the tightest national races texting you three times a day. It may also be the member of Congress in the safe district next to you, and your state representative, and your school board members.

The development and use of AI in campaigning is different depending on what side of the aisle you look at. On the Republican side, Push Digital Group is going "all in" on a new AI initiative, using the technology to create hundreds of ad variants for their clients automatically, as well as assisting with strategy, targeting, and data analysis. On the other side, the National Democratic Training Committee recently released a playbook for using AI. Quiller is building an AI-powered fundraising platform aimed at drastically reducing the time campaigns spend producing emails and texts. Progressive-aligned startups Chorus AI and BattlegroundAI are offering AI tools for automatically generating ads for use on social media and other digital platforms. DonorAtlas automates data collection on potential donors, and RivalMind AI focuses on political research and strategy, automating the production of candidate dossiers.

For now, there seems to be an investment gap between Democratic- and Republican-aligned technology innovators. Progressive venture fund Higher Ground Labs boasts $50 million in deployed investments since 2017 and a significant focus on AI. Republican-aligned counterparts operate on a much smaller scale. Startup Caucus has announced one investment -- of $50,000 -- since 2022. The Center for Campaign Innovation funds research projects and events, not companies. This echoes a longstanding gap in campaign technology between Democratic- and Republican-aligned fundraising platforms ActBlue and WinRed, which has landed the former in Republicans' political crosshairs.

Of course, not all campaign technology innovations will be visible. In 2016, the Trump campaign vocally eschewed using data to drive campaign strategy and appeared to be falling way behind on ad spending, but was -- we learned in retrospect -- actually leaning heavily into digital advertising and making use of new controversial mechanisms for accessing and exploiting voters' social media data with vendor Cambridge Analytica. The most impactful uses of AI in the 2026 midterms may not be known until 2027 or beyond.

The Organizers

Beyond the realm of political consultants driving ad buys and fundraising appeals, organizers are using AI in ways that feel more radically new.

The hypothetical potential of AI to drive political movements was illustrated in 2022 when a Danish artist collective used an AI model to found a political party, the Synthetic Party, and generate its policy goals. This was more of an art project than a popular movement, but it demonstrated that AIs -- synthesizing the expressions and policy interests of humans -- can formulate a political platform. In 2025, Denmark hosted a "summit" of eight such AI political agents where attendees could witness "continuously orchestrate[d] algorithmic micro-assemblies, spontaneous deliberations, and impromptu policy-making" by the participating AIs.

The more viable version of this concept lies in the use of AIs to facilitate deliberation. AIs are being used to help legislators collect input from constituents and to hold large-scale citizen assemblies. This kind of AI-driven "sensemaking" may play a powerful role in the future of public policy. Some research has suggested that AI can be as or more effective than humans in helping people find common ground on controversial policy issues.

Another movement for "Public AI" is focused on wresting AI from the hands of corporations to put people, through their governments, in control. Civic technologists in national governments from Singapore, Japan, Sweden, and Switzerland are building their own alternatives to Big Tech AI models, for use in public administration and distribution as a public good.

Labor organizers have a particularly interesting relationship to AI. At the same time that they are galvanizing mass resistance against the replacement or endangerment of human workers by AI, many are racing to leverage the technology in their own work to build power.

Some entrepreneurial organizers have used AI in the past few years as tools for activating, connecting, answering questions for, and providing guidance to their members. In the UK, the Centre for Responsible Union AI studies and promotes the use of AI by unions; they've published several case studies. The UK Public and Commercial Services Union has used AI to help their reps simulate recruitment conversations before going into the field. The Belgian union ACV-CVS has used AI to sort hundreds of emails per day from members to help
them respond more efficiently. Software companies such as Quorum are increasingly offering AI-driven products to cater to the needs of organizers and grassroots campaigns.

But unions have also leveraged AI for its symbolic power. In the U.S., the Screen Actors Guild held up the specter of AI displacement of creative labor to attract public attention and sympathy, and the ETUC (the European confederation of trade unions) developed a policy platform for responding to AI.

Finally, some union organizers have leveraged AI in more provocative ways. Some have applied it to hacking the "bossware" AI to subvert the exploitative intent or disrupt the anti-union practices of their managers.

The Citizens

Many of the tasks we've talked about so far are familiar use cases to anyone working in office and management settings: writing emails, providing user (or voter, or member) support, doing research.

But even mundane tasks, when automated at scale and targeted at specific ends, can be pernicious. AI is not neutral. It can be applied by many actors for many purposes. In the hands of the most numerous and diverse actors in a democracy
-- the citizens -- that has profound implications.

Conservative activists in Georgia and Florida have used a tool named EagleAI to automate challenging voter registration en masse (although the tool's creator later denied that it uses AI). In a nonpartisan electoral management context with access to accurate data sources, such automated review of electoral registrations might be useful and effective. In this hyperpartisan context, AI merely serves to amplify the proclivities of activists at the extreme of their movements. This trend will continue unabated in 2026.

Of course, citizens can use AI to safeguard the integrity of elections. In Ghana's 2024 presidential election, civic organizations used an AI tool to automatically detect and mitigate electoral disinformation spread on social media. The same year, Kenyan protesters developed specialized chatbots to distribute information about a controversial finance bill in Parliament and instances of government corruption.

So far, the biggest way Americans have leveraged AI in politics is in self-expression. About ten million Americans have used

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