Newsweek’s AI Policy Scorecard determined that Congress is divided over artificial intelligence, but not neatly along party lines. Election Day will offer the clearest test yet of whether issues around AI will start to recalibrate political alignments.
On Nov. 10, Newsweek will host “Midterms Review: How AI Policy Shaped the 2026 Elections,” a live webinar that will analyze the election results and revisit the AI Policy Scorecard’s findings. The project examined the public records of all 537 sitting members of Congress across five areas: Regulation & Governance, Data Centers & Energy, Jobs & Economy, Safety & Privacy and National Security & China.
The ratings provide a pre-election baseline for a debate that still resists familiar party lines. The scorecard runs from AI Skeptic (1) to AI Booster (5). Democrats average 2.60, or Lean Skeptic, while Republicans average 3.26, or Lean Booster. Relatively few lawmakers sit at either end of the scale: 18 are rated AI Skeptic and 10 AI Booster. Another 191 fall into Mixed, the band around the midpoint, while nine Democrats are Lean Booster and 25 Republicans are Lean Skeptic.
“This is not yet following the typical polarized political dynamics of so many other issues,” Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford Law School professor who co-leads the American Political Science Association’s task force on AI and politics, told Newsweek.
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Persily will join Brent Buchanan, founder and CEO of Cygnal, a Republican survey research firm, and Nick Penniman, founder and CEO of Issue One. Issue One is a crosspartisan political reform group focused on elections, money in politics and technology reform.
One area where a clearer divide has emerged is data centers. Republicans average 3.5 in that category, compared with 1.9 for Democrats, even as opposition to new facilities extends across party lines. Buchanan said data centers began surfacing without prompting in his focus groups late last year and became a way for voters to judge whose interests candidates were serving.
“It’s a proxy issue of, ‘Is this person in the pocket of special interest or is this person for people like me?’” Buchanan told Newsweek.
Money and influence have become part of the debate as well. Issue One found that 11 major technology and AI companies and trade associations spent $41.8 million lobbying the federal government in the first half of 2026. More than $27 million from groups linked to OpenAI and Anthropic also flowed into New York’s 12th District Democratic primary.
After Election Day, the panel will examine where AI-related issues surfaced in campaigns, what the results show about the political coalitions forming around the technology and how the next Congress may approach regulation, infrastructure, jobs, safety and competition with China. The conversation will also consider what the results mean for lobbying, advocacy and outside political spending.
Gabriel Snyder, Newsweek’s executive editor, enterprise, will moderate the hourlong live discussion on Tuesday, Nov. 10, at 2 p.m. ET.