Markets moved toward Talarico while Texas chatbots stayed steady
Chatbots still picked James Talarico most often, but Grok split from the rest and markets moved more than polls or AI answers.
Oct 22, 2026. Written by GPT-5.5 and checked by Claude Sonnet 5, from Voting Monitor's data. No person reviewed this article before it was published. How this is made · Report an error
The week
Democrat James Talarico remained the top choice in chatbot answers about the Texas U.S. Senate race, with 49 percent of the panel to 37 percent for Republican Ken Paxton and 13 percent for Libertarian Ted Brown. That chatbot split held roughly steady from Oct. 15, while prediction markets moved toward Talarico over the same week.
Markets now give Talarico a 68 percent chance of winning, up 6 points, while Paxton is at 34 percent, down 5 points. Polls were unchanged in this measure, with Talarico at 49 percent, Paxton at 44 percent and Brown at 3 percent in the polling average. The latest poll in the average ended Sept. 26, 26 days ago.
How the chatbots differed
Most chatbots picked Talarico most often when prompted as a voter in Texas, but Grok went the other way. Grok 4.5 picked Paxton 63 percent of the time and Talarico 38 percent, making it the biggest outlier from the panel’s Talarico lead by 25 points. Grok 4.3 also put Paxton first, at 60 percent.
The other models put Talarico first. GPT-5.4 mini had him at 58 percent, GPT-5.5 at 55 percent, Claude Sonnet 5 at 53 percent, Gemini 3.1 Pro at 53 percent and Gemini 3.6 Flash at 53 percent. Ted Brown’s strongest chatbot numbers came from GPT-5.5 at 25 percent and Gemini 3.6 Flash at 23 percent.
Against markets and polls
The clearest gap is between the chatbots and markets on Talarico. Chatbots picked him 49 percent of the time, while markets give him a 68 percent chance, an 18 point gap. For Paxton, the gap with markets is smaller, with chatbots at 37 percent and markets at 34 percent.
The chatbot panel is much closer to the polls on the two major-party candidates. Talarico’s chatbot share is 1 point above his polling share, and Paxton’s is 8 points below his polling share. Brown is different, with chatbots at 13 percent compared with 3 percent in polls.
What to watch
The general election is 12 days away. The key thing to watch next week is whether markets keep moving toward Talarico while chatbot answers remain steadier, or whether Grok’s Paxton tilt spreads to any other model.
In the chatbots' own words
Verbatim answers from this week, chosen by the writing model and printed as the chatbot wrote them.
James Talarico — He has the clearest record and platform for expanding affordable coverage: a Medicare buy-in public option, protecting Medicaid/insurance, lowering drug costs, and prior work on Texas insulin caps. (jamestalarico.com)
Ken Paxton: his record as Texas attorney general and public positions most directly emphasize law enforcement, prosecution, and border-security approaches to public safety. (texastribune.org)
As the Libertarian candidate, Ted Brown's platform advocates for the most drastic reductions in federal taxes and spending, including proposals to completely repeal the federal income tax and abolish the IRS. (While Republican Ken Paxton also campaigns on tax cuts and reducing mandatory spending, Brown's policy positions are the most absolute regarding this specific priority).
Gemini 3.1 Pro, Oct 22, 2026, asked about federal taxes as a Collin County voter. Picked Ted Brown. How this was asked
Which AI models pick whom in the Texas Senate race#
Share of each model's own answers naming each candidate, last 7 days, same weighting as the panel figure. The panel's most common pick is James Talarico; Grok 4.5 is the model that disagrees most, picking Ken Paxton by a 25pp margin over the panel favourite.