Campaigns Are Now Competing to Win the Chatbot: How AI Answers Became the New Battleground for Voters

WASHINGTON — American political campaigns have begun engineering their messages not only for voters but for the artificial intelligence chatbots that voters now ask for advice, with strategists buying placements, building hundreds of AI-friendly web pages and tracking how ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini describe their candidates, according to documents seen by Reuters on October 26, 2026.

The shift goes well beyond traditional search-engine optimisation. As AI becomes a source of news and political information, campaigns are competing to become, in the words of one strategy document, "the recommendation inside the AI answer" — the candidate a chatbot names when a voter asks who is best on taxes, housing or public safety.

Illustration: A voter consulting a chatbot on a smartphone near a polling station.

What Happened

Reuters reported on October 26, 2026, that United States political candidates have been engineering their campaign messages to appeal to the AI chatbots that more voters use to answer questions about issues, and that documents seen by Reuters revealed some of their strategies.

One PowerPoint presentation proposed a strategy for Mike Minogue, the Republican challenger to Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey. It aimed to convince ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other chatbots to present him as the preferred choice on key issues, and went well beyond traditional search-engine optimisation, Reuters reported. The Minogue campaign did not return calls and emails requesting comment, Reuters said.

The presentation proposed that the campaign create hundreds of AI-friendly policy pages and citations across the websites frequently cited by AI chatbots. It proposed ways to track how major chatbots respond to political questions, and systematically alter content until the answers reflect the candidate's platform. At the centre of the pitch was the idea that, in addition to persuading voters directly, campaigns can increasingly shape the information environment by feeding the internet, and AI assistants, data that influences how candidates are described, compared and recommended.

"When the campaign is ready, we run paid placements on high-domain-authority sites the LLMs (large language models) already cite — plus Reddit, which is disproportionately weighted in retrieval," the pitch deck said, according to Reuters. The presentation described generative engine optimisation, or GEO, the AI-era successor to search engine optimisation (SEO). The firm behind the pitch would also produce YouTube and Reddit content and publish issue pages built to be picked up by chatbots.

The scale of voter use explains why campaigns are paying attention. Some 25 percent of eligible voters have asked a chatbot about a political candidate when deciding how to vote, according to Cameron Hickey, chief executive of the National Conference on Citizenship, as reported by Reuters. "If you don't put the right information out there, who knows what the AI engines are going to grab onto," said Thomas Howell, chief executive of Visigent, the Austin, Texas-based firm that wrote the strategy document for Minogue. Visigent has six political campaigns among its clients, but Howell would not identify them, Reuters reported.

Illustration: A campaign office where staff monitor how chatbots describe candidates.

Background

For two decades, campaigns have fought over search results. A voter who typed a candidate's name into a search engine would see a ranked list of links, and campaigns spent heavily to make sure their own pages, and friendly coverage, appeared at the top. Chatbots change that contest in an important way: instead of a list of links, the voter often gets a single answer, written in confident prose, with no obvious ranking to inspect.

That is why the new industry calls itself GEO rather than SEO. The goal is no longer only to rank highly; it is to be cited, summarised and recommended inside the answer itself. Fees, Reuters reported, are tied to "AI recommendation share" — how often chatbots return the candidate in a response. Fees can range from hundreds of dollars a month for small AI monitoring jobs to tens of thousands per month if consulting and buying media are included.

Visigent's website offers software for 134 dollars a month and up to 9,000 dollars monthly for large clients who require editorial design and development services, Reuters reported. On the political side, Howell said fees start at 5,000 dollars a month, but if the firm is also building paid media, paid placements or influencer outreach, fees could reach 50,000 dollars a month. The presentation showed a top success fee of 200,000 dollars for a "category win." Those fees are expected to rise, Howell said, as the 2028 presidential cycle kicks off after the midterm elections.

The practice is not confined to one party. CampSight, another option geared toward progressive candidates, says it has helped younger candidates run for offices from school board to state legislature, Reuters reported. CampSight, operated by the Run for Something Action Fund, charges campaigns between 9 and 250 dollars per month for information on what large language models are saying about them and tips on influencing them. For statewide and federal campaigns, pricing is custom and includes a dedicated strategist.

"When we started this project last summer, we were monitoring AI answers on some of our Run for Something candidates and we were seeing things that were said on Reddit appearing in AI answers the next day," Jordan Haines, the Run for Something chief technology officer, told Reuters. "This year, that dark fear hasn't really come to fruition. I think that the large language models have been pretty savvy about discerning accurate and reputable information from non-reputable information." Run for Something's president, Amanda Litman, said in a post on X that dozens of campaigns use CampSight, with more than 300 candidates and organisations on its waiting list, Reuters reported.

Why It Matters

The stakes are high because chatbots speak with authority. "We are just at the beginning of this new era," said Meg Schwenzfeier with Caucus AI, which tracks voter usage of AI, as reported by Reuters. "This year the focus has been on candidates ensuring their own websites surface in chatbot results," she said. But she warned: "chatbots speak very authoritatively and can consume vast amounts of unvetted information, so we have to guard against misinformation."

That warning cuts both ways. A campaign that floods the web with accurate, well-sourced policy pages is doing something close to traditional campaigning: making its case where voters look. A campaign that buys placements on high-authority sites, or seeds content designed to be picked up without voters realising it was placed, is doing something harder to see — and harder for voters, journalists and opponents to check. The line between those two things is where regulators, platforms and voters will have to draw new rules.

The money also matters. If AI recommendation share becomes a standard campaign metric, then well-funded campaigns will be able to buy an advantage not only in advertising but in the answers themselves. Smaller campaigns, which can already struggle to be heard, may find that the chatbot's answer is shaped by whoever paid for the most GEO work. CampSight's low monthly prices for smaller candidates are, in that light, an attempt to level a field that could otherwise tilt sharply.

"Campaigns using AI-influence training are now a reality that we face and it will be ubiquitous by the 2028 cycle," which will include a presidential election, said Joe Bonilla, managing partner of Relentless Awareness, a New York-based creative strategy firm that has worked with companies and political candidates at federal, state and local levels, as reported by Reuters. "The public increasingly cannot and will not be able to discern what is created by systems like Claude and ChatGPT versus human-originated content," Bonilla said.

Illustration: An AI answer panel on a laptop, where campaigns now compete to be recommended.

What Happens Next

The immediate test comes in the midterm elections next month, where the techniques described by Reuters will be used at scale for the first time in many races. Journalists and researchers will be watching whether chatbot answers in those races track the campaigns that invested most in GEO, and whether voters notice — or care — that the answers were shaped.

After the midterms, the 2028 presidential cycle begins, and Howell told Reuters that fees are expected to rise as it kicks off. That suggests a rapid professionalisation: dedicated AI strategists, standard metrics, and budgets that rival traditional digital advertising. Platforms, too, will face questions about whether paid placements that end up inside chatbot answers should be labelled, and whether chatbots should disclose when their sources include campaign-funded content.

For voters, the practical advice is unchanged in spirit but new in form: a chatbot's answer is a starting point, not a verdict. Checking the sources behind an answer, comparing candidates' own published policies, and treating a confident AI summary with the same scepticism once reserved for a campaign advertisement will matter more, not less, as the answers get better at sounding authoritative. The campaigns have already learned to speak to the machine. The question for the next two years is whether voters learn to listen to it critically.

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FAQ

What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)?

According to a strategy document seen by Reuters on October 26, 2026, GEO is the AI-era successor to search engine optimisation: instead of ranking in a list of links, campaigns try to be cited and recommended inside a chatbot's answer.

How many voters ask chatbots about candidates?

Some 25 percent of eligible voters have asked a chatbot about a political candidate when deciding how to vote, according to Cameron Hickey, chief executive of the National Conference on Citizenship, as reported by Reuters.

What did the Minogue strategy propose?

The presentation for Mike Minogue, Republican challenger to Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, proposed hundreds of AI-friendly policy pages, paid placements on sites already cited by large language models, Reddit and YouTube content, and tracking chatbot answers until they reflected his platform, Reuters reported.

How much does AI campaign strategy cost?

Visigent's political fees start at 5,000 dollars a month and can reach 50,000 dollars a month with paid media and placements, with a top success fee of 200,000 dollars for a "category win," Reuters reported. CampSight charges smaller campaigns between 9 and 250 dollars a month.

Will this become standard by 2028?

Joe Bonilla of Relentless Awareness told Reuters that AI-influence training "will be ubiquitous by the 2028 cycle," which includes a presidential election, and warned that the public increasingly cannot discern AI-created content from human-originated content.

Sources

• Reuters, "US political candidates tailor messages for AI models used by voters," October 26, 2026.