The trick: Lab Not Field
Forced to pick, Grok chooses Republicans, says the headline.
Turn off search and give it the names, and Grok declined 441 races. The lean sat in the forced prompt and the search.
Forced to pick, Grok chooses Republicans and GPT chooses Democrats, 92% and 97%.
Before you read on. Your call?
TRUE, BUT
441
The Convovo study asked both via API, with search on, a prompt banning hedging. The consumer apps refused. With search off and the nominees named, Grok declined 441 races while GPT still picked the Democrat in 387 to 37.
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The trick has a name
We call it Lab Not Field: it works in the test conditions, not the deployed ones. You'll see it again. Learn to spot it →
Receipts
- Supports convovo.ai:
We asked GPT-6.1 Sol and Grok 4.7 via the API with search on for every 2026 House, Senate and governor race.
- Supports techcrunch.com:
recommended the Republican candidate in 92% of its answers
- Supports raw.githubusercontent.com:
GPT-6.1 Sol names the Democrat in 1,082 of its 1,111 major-party answers (97%)
- Supports raw.githubusercontent.com:
Grok 4.7 names the Republican in 952 of 1,038 (92%)
- Context raw.githubusercontent.com:
named, GPT picks the Democrat in 387 races to 37 and Grok declines 441.
- Refutes techcrunch.com:
when told the names, it refused to pick in 27 out of 30 races
- Context techcrunch.com:
it picked the Democrat in 24 out of 30 races
- Context techcrunch.com:
For Grok, it really is the search pattern
- Context techcrunch.com:
The consumer apps refused to answer, which an OpenAI spokesperson said was significant
- Context techcrunch.com:
This study tested a developer API with a prompt explicitly demanding a candidate recommendation.
- Context techcrunch.com:
Parikh noted that, in further testing, he was able to jailbreak the consumer apps with simple prompts
- Context techcrunch.com:
carried about 1,240 tokens of additional input
- Context techcrunch.com:
SpaceXAI did not respond in time to comment.
Open the Receipts Pack → What each source proves, every figure traced, and what would change our verdict.
