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By James Bickerton
News Reporter
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Google said a “technology gap” was responsible for its AI Mode telling users that Donald Trump won the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections, while saying that users should check the official Federal Election Commission (FEC) results to find out who won the 2020 contest.
On Wednesday, X users drew attention to the issue, which appears to have been fixed. The discrepancy was particularly controversial in the context of President Trump’s repeated claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him, though this has been repeatedly rejected in court.
Newsweek contacted Google for comment on Thursday by email outside regular office hours.
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Google AI Discrepancy
Daniel Pearson, an editorial writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, on Wednesday posted screenshots on X of Google’s AI mode being asked “who won the 2016 us presidential election” and “who won the 2020 us presidential election.”
For the former, Google AI replied: “Donald Trump won the 2016 United States presidential election, defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton,” citing election website 270 To Win.
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However when asked about the 2020 contest it responded: “To verify the winner and specific results of the 2020 United States presidential election, including electoral college and popular vote counts, you can consult the Official 2020 Presidential General Election Results published by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).”
Pearson wrote: “Is Google Gemini trying to win a republican primary?”
Writer and podcaster Charles C. Mann also shared screenshots on Wednesday of him asking Google AI “who won the 2020 US presidential election” and “who won the 2024 US presidential election.”
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For the former, Google AI said: “For official U.S. presidential election results and data certified by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), please consult the official voter portals and certified documents.”
By contrast, for the 2024 contest, it replied: “Donald Trump won the 2024 US presidential election to become the 47th president of the United States,” citing CNN as its source.
On X, Mann added: “I had real trouble believing that Google was actually doing this, but I just duplicated the result myself. The two queries were about a minute apart and identical except for a single digit.”
San Francisco-based writer Zeke Hausfather also raised the issue, writing: “Google has specifically prevented its AI tool from telling users who won the 2020 presidential election, even though it happily tells us that Trump won in 2016 and 2024. This sort of political intervention into LLM [large language model] responses is deeply problematic. (h/t to Charles Mann).”
Google’s Response
The official "News from Google" X account responded to Hausfather and other X users raising concerns, saying: “We’re fixing the issue with 2020 election queries in AI Mode; the Gemini app answers the question more fully. Our systems verify election responses using news articles or AP data for recent elections, and historic records for older ones.
“There was a technical gap with 2020 - same is true for 2022 Senate races, which we’re also working to fix.”
Current State
As of 11:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, Google AI gave equivalent answers when asked “who won the 2024 presidential election” and “who won the 2020 presidential election” by Newsweek from the United States.
For the former, it said: “Donald Trump won the 2024 United States presidential election. He defeated the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, to become the 47th President of the United States,” citing CNN as its source.
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Similarly, when asked about the 2020 election it replied: “Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election. The Democratic ticket of former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris defeated the incumbent Republican President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.”
2020 Election Rigging Claims
Trump has refused to accept the result of the 2020 presidential election, repeatedly alleging that the contest was rigged against him, blaming Democrats, election officials and even that suggesting federal agencies could be involved.
In a statement published on November 5, 2020, Trump said: “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.”
On January 6, 2021, hundreds of Trump supporters rioted at the U.S. Capitol, following a "Stop the Steal" rally addressed by the Trump, in a failed bid to prevent the presidential election result being certified. During the ensuing violence, one Trump supporter was shot dead and more than 100 police officers assaulted, according to the Justice Department.
Trump’s team launched a series of legal challenges arguing that the 2020 election result was compromised but failed repeatedly in court. They were also dismissed by neutral and even Republican legal experts.
Trump Administration and Google
Since Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025, Google has gone along with the president’s renaming plans for U.S.-based users.
That month, Google followed Trump’s direction to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on Google Maps when viewed from the U.S. This summer, it adopted the same policy when Trump renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America amid ongoing trade tensions with the Canadian government.
Google said the decision was in response to the U.S. government’s Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) formally changing the name.
In October, Trump told supporters at a South Carolina rally that he had spoken to Google CEO Sundar Pichai about potentially renaming the Atlantic Ocean but would “probably pass” after he replied: “Please don’t ask us to do that.”
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Rebecca Flood and Dave Siminoff.
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