2026 Midterms · Social Intelligence Audit

The Conversation

Before the Vote.

A 360° real-time read on the political attention layer six months before the 2026 midterms — what narratives are driving influence, who is gaining and losing momentum, and what four frontier AI models conclude when fed the same dataset.

Source

LunarCrush platform — 30M-50M posts/hour cross-platform plus 10,000+ news sources.

Synthesis

Claude Opus 4.7 · GPT-5.2 · Gemini 2.5 Pro · Grok-4 — same dataset, same prompt, four labs.

Audience

White House digital strategy, communications, political affairs.

Attention asymmetry

Trump vs the entire Dem field

24h
40×

Trump's 1.03B daily engagements equal roughly 40 times the entire combined volume of all named Democratic figures.

Trump: 1.03B · Combined Dem field (Harris+Newsom+Bernie+Shapiro): ~25M
⚠ Coalition stress

MAGA's critical-vs-supportive theme weight

Alarming
95% CRITICAL

Of 4 themes detected in MAGA-tagged conversation, 3 are critical:

60% Trump's actions
25% MAGA divisions
10% Tucker break
15% supportive (lone)

All 4 LLMs converged on this as the single most important data point in the entire dataset.

Today's Breakout
+1,142%
Vivek Ramaswamy engagements vs daily avg
(OH primary win, today)
DeSantis Momentum
+105%
Mentions, 30-day delta
52-wk highs hit May 2
Establishment Collapse
40%
Newsom sentiment
Mentions: 52-wk LOW (134/day)
Left-Flank Energy
77%
Bernie Sanders sentiment
Posts +39% WoW
01 / The Attention Layer

The Conversation Has One Center.

Daily engagement volume across 12 named political figures. Bars normalized to Trump's volume. Sentiment computed at the post level then aggregated across 24h.

# Figure Engagements / 24h Volume share Sentiment Tag
1
Donald Trump
President · 2nd term
1,031,739,738
66%
Dominant
2
Elon Musk
Tech-political amplifier
444,595,006
81%
Amplifier
3
MAGA
Movement / brand
97,417,010
61%
Stress
4
Joe Rogan
Podcaster / cross-political
39,152,936
67%
Voice
5
Vivek Ramaswamy
GOP gov nominee · OH
26,025,489
85%
Breakout
6
Kamala Harris
Former VP · 2028 positioning
18,992,899
50%
Decay
7
Tucker Carlson
Conservative commentator
11,647,271
46%
Fracturing
8
Ron DeSantis
FL Governor
8,187,530
67%
Rising
9
JD Vance
Vice President
5,982,443
66%
Thin
10
Bernie Sanders
Senator (I-VT)
6,105,093
77%
Energy
11
Gavin Newsom
CA Governor
124,863
40%
Collapse
12
Josh Shapiro
PA Governor
10,799
100%
Trivial
02 / 180 Days of Signal

Momentum Across the Cycle.

Daily engagement curves over the last 6 months for the four most diagnostic political topics. Trump's volatility dwarfs everyone else; DeSantis's late-April liftoff is visible; Newsom's collapse is unmistakable.

Daily engagements · 6mo

Donald Trump

Peak 3.37B · April 7
PEAK 3.37B
Nov 2025DecJanFebMarAprMay 7
Daily engagements · 6mo

MAGA movement

Sentiment trending DOWN
Nov 2025DecJanFebMarAprMay 7
Creator volume · 6mo

Ron DeSantis

Liftoff curve
52-WK HIGH MAY 2
Nov 2025DecJanFebMarAprMay 7
Daily engagements · 6mo

Gavin Newsom

Collapse
Nov 2025DecJanFebMarAprMay 7
03 / Rising

Three Figures Building Surface Area for 2028.

01
+1,142% today

Vivek Ramaswamy

GOP gov nominee, Ohio · won primary May 7

Sentiment
85%
Engagements
26.0M

52-week highs across the board, today. Trump-endorsed primary win. 3,334 unique creators — also 52-week high.

⚠ 30% critical themes already
02
+105% MoM mentions

Ron DeSantis

FL Governor · presumptive 2028 GOP candidate

Sentiment
67%
Engagements
8.2M

Structural momentum, not a news spike. +83% creators, +105% mentions, +107% posts — all 30-day deltas. Hit 52-wk highs May 2.

→ FL congressional map signed (55% supportive theme weight)
03
+39% WoW posts

Bernie Sanders

Senator (I-VT) · progressive figurehead

Sentiment
77%
Engagements
6.1M

Strongest left-flank energy in dataset. 77% sentiment is the highest of any Dem-aligned figure. Israel-aid wedge gives cross-coalition reach.

→ +13% engagements, +22% mentions, +39% posts WoW
04 / Falling

Three Figures Losing Narrative Oxygen.

01
52-wk low mentions

Gavin Newsom

CA Governor · presumed 2028 Dem hopeful

Sentiment
40%
Mentions/24h
134

Outright collapse, not slowdown. Volume down ~10× from Nov peak. 70% critical on policy/economy + 30% on $267M hospice fraud scheme.

→ Calls for resignation surfacing
02
-89% YoY engagements

Kamala Harris

Former VP · 2028 positioning

Sentiment
50%
Engagements
19.0M

Below-the-line continuation. Critical themes (30%) outweigh supportive (25%). 2024 campaign criticism still dominant frame.

→ "Natural successor" frame contested
03
46% sentiment

Tucker Carlson

Conservative commentator

Sentiment
46%
Engagements
11.6M

Once a unifier, now a wedge. 25% antisemitism accusations + 15% foreign-agent allegations + 10% Trump break — his audience is fracturing.

→ Trump-Carlson break in 3 separate feeds
05 / The Headline Number

Why MAGA's 95% Critical Is the Cover-of-the-Briefing Data Point

The number is loud, but the methodology behind it makes it interesting. "15% supportive" doesn't mean only 15% of people support MAGA. It means something more specific — and more diagnostic of the 2026 cycle.

What sentiment said
61%

Tone of MAGA-tagged posts in the last 24 hours. Positive-leaning.

Sentiment measures how nicely people are speaking. It says nothing about what they're speaking about.

What themes said
1of 4

Themes detected by NLP across the same posts. Three are critical.

Themes measure what the conversation is about. The mix has flipped.

The four themes detected today

Weight Stance Theme detected by LunarCrush NLP
60% Critical Trump's Actions and Decisions — Iran ceasefire framed as betrayal, public attacks on MAGA figures (Carlson)
25% Critical Divisions within MAGA — "supporters turning against Trump" registers as a discrete topic
10% Critical Tucker-Trump break — surfaced via related Tucker topic; right-amplification stack fragmenting
15% Supportive Support for MAGA ideals — patriotism, America First. The lone positive theme.
What it says

The MAGA-positive crowd is going quiet — and the people still talking about MAGA are talking about disagreements within it, not about why it's winning.

The 60% theme is about Trump himself: not about Dems, not about media, not about RINOs. The biggest critical conversation inside MAGA is about Trump's recent decisions.

What it doesn't say
  • ·Trump's personal popularity is collapsing (it isn't — 1B+ engagements, 66% sentiment)
  • ·Dems are winning the conversation (MAGA is auto-cannibalizing, not under attack)
  • ·The GOP loses the House (primary discipline 26/26 + redistricting still intact)
  • ·The fracture is permanent (measuring stress, not breakage)
Why it's the headline

Midterm GOP overperformance has historically required base mobilization, not swing voters.

Enthusiasm shows up as supportive-theme volume. Today MAGA's own topic produces 1 supportive theme to 3 critical — the inverse of the 2024 cycle. If the mix is still 1:3 in October, GOP underperforms its structural floor by 5–15 House seats and likely loses the Senate.

Today's headline contradicts itself

Trump-backed candidates won 26 of 26 Republican primaries. But internal MAGA divisions are growing.

The electoral machine is still working. The cultural movement underneath it is fracturing. Those usually move together — when they don't, the machine eventually breaks. That's the variable to watch through October.

The single strongest signal · 4-model consensus

95% of MAGA's current themes are critical of Trump's actions or the movement itself.

Only 15% are supportive.

This is not external opposition. This is conversation tagged with the President's own movement turning critical of its leader. Four AI models analyzing this dataset independently agreed: it is the most important data point in the entire 2026 cycle.

06 / Cross-Model Consensus

Four Models. Four Labs. One Verdict.

The same LunarCrush dataset and prompt sent to four frontier AI models. Their responses converged with materially identical reasoning. Cross-family consensus on a political prediction is itself an unusually strong signal.

Model House outcome Senate outcome Confidence Biggest swing variable
Claude Opus 4.7
Anthropic
GOP holds
40× attention asymmetry + redistricting structural floor
Toss-up tilt GOP
Variance from MAGA cohesion stress
Medium MAGA cohesion (60%/25% critical breakdown)
GPT-5.2
OpenAI
GOP holds
Attention centralized; Dem bench collapsing
Toss-up
MAGA fracture creates cohesion risk
Medium MAGA cohesion (60% critical Trump's actions)
Gemini 2.5 Pro
Google
GOP holds
Trump-backed primary sweep + DeSantis redistricting
Toss-up
GOP internal stress creates Dem openings
Medium MAGA internal cohesion — single largest source of volatility
Grok-4
xAI
GOP holds
Trump-backed primaries + DeSantis maps
Toss-up
MAGA divisions + progressive momentum
Medium MAGA cohesion (60% critical themes risk turnout)
Rising — 4/4 agree

DeSantis · Vivek Ramaswamy · Bernie Sanders

Same three figures named by every model with materially identical reasoning.

Falling — 4/4 agree

Newsom · Harris · Tucker Carlson

Same three figures named by every model with same evidence chains.

Strongest signal — 4/4 agree

MAGA's 95% critical-theme weight

Four labs, one number. The cover-of-the-briefing data point.

07 / The Call

GOP holds the House.
Senate is a toss-up.

If MAGA cohesion holds through October, GOP overperforms. If it fragments further, statewide races flip. Confidence: medium. All four LLMs converged.

House of Representatives GOP holds
GOP holds.

Structural floor is too high to flip.

  • Trump's 1B+ daily engagement = 40× the entire Dem field combined
  • FL redistricting (DeSantis) raises the structural floor before any vote is cast
  • Trump-backed candidates won 26/26 Republican primaries
  • No establishment Dem is showing organic momentum to counter the asymmetry
U.S. Senate Toss-up
Toss-up.

Statewide races are more variance-sensitive.

  • Same attention dynamics, but statewide elections are more variance-sensitive
  • MAGA cohesion stress (95% critical themes) hits competitive races first
  • Tucker-Trump fracture compromises GOP messaging unity at the amplification layer
  • Iran outcome is a binary swing variable — wins compound, losses cascade
08 / Watch List

Six Leading Indicators.

Concrete metrics whose movement will signal cycle direction before traditional polling registers it.

01

MAGA 7-day rolling sentiment

Currently 61%. Cross below 50% = cycle has measurably turned.

Cycle-direction trigger
02

Tucker Carlson sentiment

Currently 46%. Recovery above 55% = right-amp stack reunifying. Decline below 40% = active fracture continuing.

Cohesion proxy
03

DeSantis momentum sustainability

+83-107% over 30 days. Creators-per-day above 5,000 through summer = he becomes dominant non-Trump GOP brand.

2028 invisible primary
04

Newsom volume floor

Currently 52-wk low (134 mentions/day). Recovery above 2,000/day = scandal contained. Continued decline = 2028 candidacy nonviable.

Dem successor question
05

Bernie Sanders growth velocity

+39% posts WoW. Sustained through Q3 = progressive lane consolidated. Watch for him to anoint a successor — high-leverage 2028 signal.

Successor signal
06

Iran narrative balance

Trump's Iran themes 35% supportive / 20% critical today. If critical surpasses supportive, the President's #1 narrative driver flips from asset to liability within days.

Foreign-policy beta
09 / How This Was Built

The LunarCrush Pipeline.

Real-time social intelligence at platform scale, normalized into structured signal that a decision-maker can read in minutes.

01 · Ingestion

Cross-platform reach

30M-50M posts per hour across X, Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, plus 10,000+ news sources. Continuous coverage of every named entity.

02 · Metrics

Engagement, mentions, creators, sentiment

Per-topic time-series with platform breakdowns. Sentiment computed at the post level using LunarCrush's classifier.

03 · Themes

Narrative extraction

For each topic, dominant supportive and critical themes are extracted with weighting (% of conversation). Reveals what people are saying, not just how loudly.

04 · Influence

Top creators per topic

Per-topic ranking by amplification. Reveals which voices actually move each conversation, not just who has the most followers.

05 · LLM Synthesis

Cross-family consensus

Full structured dataset sent to four frontier AI models from four labs with the same prompt. Convergence functions as a confidence signal.

06 · Output

Decision-ready

This dashboard. Every claim traces to a specific data point. No external polling. No prior-knowledge pattern matching. Pure social-attention signal interpreted by AI.