Horse Race Politics is a free, gamified website that allows users to predict various political outcomes, notably that of the 2026 Welsh Senedd election. It is the third iteration of a platform I built for my MSc and PhD research. This time, it has been designed and built in collaboration with our partners, Focus Games, a game design company based in Glasgow.
The site has been built using gamification as the underlying engine, as opposed to existing financial alternatives, such as Polymarket and Kalshi. There is zero risk to users – just points and trophies to earn, and leaderboard places to climb.
Horse Race Politics is an alternative and active way of following politics, as opposed to the passive consumption of news and other media. It allows you to predict what you think will happen and be scored accordingly, based on how large a percentage you assign to the eventual correct outcome and how far away from the deadline you made your prediction.
Over time, users will cultivate their skills in political forecasting, but also, and more importantly, we hope that users will become more knowledgeable about and interested in politics, and feel better equipped to engage in conversations about political affairs with others.
We provide the Forecast Persona, a breakdown of several attributes related to your prediction ability, such as confidence, reactivity, and timeliness. Are you ‘The Sniper’, who makes confident forecasts early and rarely updates? Or are you ‘The Whirlwind’, who updates their forecasts dramatically, by following the news cycle closely?
To get started, go to the Horse Race Politics website and create an account. Then you can head on over to the ‘Races’ page and view all the races that are ready for you to join.
Simply adjust the sliders based on how confident you are in a given outcome and hit ‘Submit Forecast’. That’s it! Come back and update your prediction as soon as possible to maximise the points you can earn. When a race reaches its deadline, points will be allocated based on your predictions. This will then move you up (or down) the leaderboards, alter your Forecast Persona stats, and allow you to earn trophies.
Horse Race Politics has much more than just Races, however! Head to the Homepage for an overview of the site and a Daily Task checklist, visit the Community page to talk to other users and read their posts, and head over to The Inside Track for our weekly Horse Race Politics podcast episodes and blog articles. Also, be sure to also keep an eye on your Profile page, which contains information about your time on the site, including attributes, performance, trophies and general activity.
Every week on the Horse Race Politics podcast, we’ll discuss the state of the races, and guests will be invited to make their own predictions and discuss them. Horse Race Politics, both the gamified website and the podcast, aims to provide all the information you need to engage with the 2026 Senedd election. So, if you think you know better than the rest, sign-up now and get forecasting!
Dr Louis Bromfield explains how to get started with Horse Race Politics in this recording from his recent WISERD Lunchtime Seminar.