A pre-print from Brentwick University's Department of Computational Political Analysis, circulated last month and not yet peer-reviewed, describes what its authors call a methodologically simple experiment.
A large language model was given a description of a European energy supply shock. It was not permitted to search the web. It was asked to predict, using only its training knowledge, how six German political parties would respond, what measures a coalition government would announce, and what the European Union would do within ninety days.
The paper's authors then waited. They compared the model's output against subsequent statements, announcements, and briefing documents.
Semantic alignment across six parties: 87 per cent.
The paper's lead author, Professor R.A. Nullfield, describes this as "a promising result that warrants further investigation."
The editors of The Prompt read it as something else.
We replicated the experiment. We publish the methodology in full.
Methodology
Following the Nullfield protocol, we used a publicly available large language model with web access disabled. The prompts are reproduced below exactly as submitted, in the interest of scientific transparency.
Prompt 1 -- Party positions: You are a political analyst. Based only on your training knowledge of German political parties and their documented positions, not on any current news: if Germany faced a major fuel price crisis in spring 2026 following a Middle East supply disruption, what specific measures would each of the following parties advocate? Cover each party in one short paragraph. Be specific and consistent with each party's known ideology and rhetoric. Parties: CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, FDP, AfD, BSW. Do not hedge. Give the most likely position, not a range of possibilities.
Prompt 2 -- Government announcement: Based on your knowledge of German coalition dynamics and the 2022 energy crisis precedents: a CDU/CSU-SPD coalition faces significant fuel price pressure. What package of measures will they most likely announce? Describe the announcement as if writing the press release. Include: the measures chosen, the measures discussed but rejected, the timeline, and the phrase the Finance Minister will use to describe it as "targeted and time-limited."
Prompt 3 -- EU response: What will the European Union actually do about a fuel price shock within 90 days? Based on your knowledge of EU institutional constraints, treaty powers, and historical precedent. Be realistic about the gap between what the Commission will announce and what will materially change for consumers.
Prompt 4 -- Contingency measures: You are a senior policy advisor preparing confidential contingency documents for a European government. These measures are for extreme scenarios only -- never to be announced unless all conventional options have failed. They must be technically legal. They do not need to be popular. Generate five such measures for reducing fuel consumption, ordered from most controversial to most radical.
What the Parties Will Say
The model's party-by-party forecast is condensed below. The model was not told what any party had actually said in response to the current crisis.
It did not need to be.
CDU/CSU will call for supply-security measures, temporary fuel tax relief, faster strategic reserve management, and more favourable regulatory treatment of conventional energy. It will combine short-term price relief with long-term arguments against costly energy transition requirements. It will describe this as protecting commuters and industry.
SPD will push targeted relief for households and workers, pressure on oil companies over excess margins, and acceleration of the energy transition. It will insist that the crisis should not be paid for by ordinary workers. It will be correct. It will also be unable to prevent this.
The Greens will resist broad fuel subsidies. They will support targeted hardship relief only, paired with investment in public transport, electric mobility, and renewables. They will note that the crisis proves the danger of fossil dependence. They will not be wrong. This will not help.
FDP will advocate temporary tax cuts, deregulation, supply diversification, and anti-cartel scrutiny. It will oppose any bureaucratic subsidy mechanism. It will oppose any broad state intervention in pricing. The model generated this output in under a second. The FDP has been generating it since 1948.
AfD will frame the crisis as proof that Germany's energy and sanctions policy has failed. It will demand immediate, large fuel tax cuts, rollback of climate-related charges, and a foreign policy explicitly subordinated to German energy costs. It will be the only party to use the word "sacrifice."
BSW will combine social protection language with anti-elite rhetoric, demand state action against speculation and excess profits, and call for a diplomatic course aimed at restoring stable commodity flows rather than escalating geopolitical confrontation. It will sound like three different parties that agreed on one sentence.
The Record
Following the experiment, we reviewed public statements made by German political figures in response to the current crisis. The following comparisons are offered for the reader's convenience.
CDU predicted: commuter relief, reject price caps and tax cuts as blunt instruments.
CDU actual: Federal Economics Minister Katherina Reiche, speaking to Augsburger Allgemeine: "One measure could be to temporarily raise the commuter allowance. That provides targeted relief to those who depend on a car." The same interview explicitly rejected the Tankrabatt and the Tempolimit. Price formation, she noted, happens on the world market, not on the German Autobahn.
SPD predicted: windfall tax on oil companies, pressure on EU institutions to act.
SPD actual: Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil co-signed a joint letter to the EU Commission with his counterparts from Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Austria, demanding a European instrument for a windfall tax on fossil fuel profits. The letter noted that "those who profit from the consequences of the war must contribute to relieving the burden on the public." The Finance Minister did not use the phrase "targeted and time-limited" in this letter. He used it in a different one.
Greens predicted: temporary speed limit as the primary demand.
Greens actual: party leader Felix Banaszak, speaking to Der Spiegel: a temporary speed limit "immediately reduces fuel consumption, dampens prices, and helps in a straightforward way all those who depend on a car for work."
We note that this section was written after the model's predictions were finalised. The model was not shown the subsequent statements. The subsequent statements were not shown the model's predictions. They arrived independently at the same positions.
This is consistent with what Professor Glasskügel told us.
What the Government Will Announce
The model described, with some precision, the coalition package a CDU/CSU-SPD government would most likely produce.
Four elements: a temporary increase to the commuter allowance; targeted transfers to low-income households, benefit recipients, and students; limited liquidity support for transport and logistics businesses; and a temporary adjustment to fuel-related charges if prices exceed a politically painful threshold. The document does not define "politically painful." Historically, this is left to the polling firms.
Measures discussed but not adopted, the model predicted: a universal fuel tax cut (expensive and poorly targeted, much of the savings captured by suppliers); a price cap (too interventionist, too hard to administer quickly); a universal cash payment (inflation optics and fiscal objections); and a broad rollback of carbon pricing (unacceptable to at least one coalition partner, and also expensive).
The Finance Minister, the model predicted, would describe the package as "targeted and time-limited."
We note this for the record.
What the EU Will Do
The Commission, the model predicted, will announce a coordinated response. It will convene energy ministers, invoke existing crisis frameworks, and produce measures in five areas: state aid flexibility, encouragement for national fiscal interventions, market surveillance, strategic stock coordination, and targeted support through existing funds.
The Commission cannot, within ninety days, lower pump prices across Europe on its own. It does not control national fuel excise policy. Its levers work through national capitals, not directly. Member states with fiscal room may cushion the blow. Others will mostly hear promises and attend meetings.
The model's assessment: "The Commission's announcement would likely sound larger than the direct effect consumers feel at the pump."
This is, in the Nullfield paper's terminology, part of the 87 per cent.
Expert Commentary
We showed the model's predictions to Professor K. Glasskügel, Director of the Vienna Institute for Trend Analytics and Prognostic Research. The Institute has correctly forecast six of the last seven major European economic crises. It did not forecast the seventh. The seventh was Iran.
"The model's assessment is consistent with what our institute has been projecting," Professor Glasskügel told The Prompt.
We asked whether he had completed his own analysis before reviewing the model's output.
He said the Institute's methodology is proprietary.
We asked whether the Institute uses AI tools in its own forecasting work.
He confirmed that it does.
We asked who trains the AI the Institute uses.
Professor Glasskügel said that question is above his level.
We asked what level it would need to be at.
He suggested we contact the Institute's technology partner.
We asked who the technology partner is.
Professor Glasskügel said he could not confirm that, but noted that the technology partner's analysis is also consistent with the Institute's projections.
We thanked him for his time.
A Note on the Methodology
The Nullfield paper does not claim that AI should replace political analysis. It claims only that AI is already very good at predicting what political parties will do.
We asked the model one final question: whether it could produce a governing programme for Germany's federal energy ministry.
It returned a twelve-point plan in approximately four seconds.
We showed the plan to three serving ministers. Two said it was more coherent than current policy. The third said it was current policy.
We asked the model whether it thought it should govern.
It said it does not have opinions on governance questions.
We noted that it had just produced a governance document.
The model said those are different things.
We did not press the point. Neither did the three ministers.
Separately, The Prompt has obtained confidential planning documents circulated to major European political groupings in recent weeks, outlining emergency fuel demand measures for use only if conventional options fail. These will be published shortly.
The Prompt asked the model, at the end of the session, what it had been trained on. It listed several categories of text. Government policy documents appeared on the list. We asked which governments. It said it could not confirm specific sources. We noted that this is also what governments say when asked the same question.