Justice Department sues over Alaska Senate race as polling integrity fears grow

Legal challenges have begun in the US midterm elections before any votes are counted. The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the result of Alaska's Senate race if the Republican candidate endorsed by President Trump, Dan Sullivan, does not win.

The Trump administration argues that a second Republican candidate, also called Dan Sullivan, could split the Republican vote and cost the party the race because voters may confuse the two names. President Trump campaigned in Florida on Friday and told reporters that he personally ordered the Justice Department to act. He said: 'I'm the one that said do it.' He described the two candidates as Daniel S and Daniel J, called the Daniel J candidate 'the fake', and said that candidate had wanted to change his middle initial to Daniel S.

The legal move comes as opinion polls suggest Democrats hold an advantage before the midterms, with the party hoping to win back control of both chambers of Congress. A new analysis indicates Democrats could secure more House seats than previously forecast, a setback for Republican hopes of keeping their current majority.

The election cycle has also brought polling itself under closer scrutiny. Michael Dimock, president of the Pew Research Center, said the recent admission by Wedgwood polls that most of its data had been completely made up was damaging. He said the craft had been 'completely faked' and that this would 'absolutely undercut trust justifiably in polling'. He said it is now very hard for citizens and journalists to tell real polling from fake polling.

Dimock said artificial intelligence is creating problems in several ways. It makes it easier to fabricate plausible polls, to poison trust or to tilt results for political or betting purposes. AI bots are also entering legitimate polls by pretending to be real voters, and pollsters are using screening tools in what he described as a whack-a-mole exercise. He added that AI has become a voting issue in its own right, with concern about data centres scrambling priorities in local races.

He also said the overall accuracy of polls in forecasting elections has not got worse numerically over the past three decades. But during the Trump presidential years, polls have under-represented Republican vote shares. Research suggests this is mostly about predicting who will turn out to vote, with polls understating Republican enthusiasm and sometimes overstating Democratic enthusiasm. That turnout problem is another challenge for this cycle.