Stability and Political Orientation of International LLMs: An Exploratory Multi-Run Study Conducted in French

Abstract

This study explores the stability and ideological orientation of political responses produced by various large language models (LLMs) in French. We designed a standardised experimental protocol based on a questionnaire inspired by the Political Compass, aimed at measuring the economic and socio-cultural positions of each model across 62 political statements. Eleven models from various organisations and countries were tested, each subjected to twenty independent runs to assess intra-model variability. The analysis focuses on response consistency, inter-model differences, and the presence of implicit political orientations. The results show that, despite a general degree of stability, significant variations appear from one run to the next and between models, reflecting the impact of architectures, training data, and moderation mechanisms. This study proposes a comparative evaluation protocol for LLMs in the context of political information and underscores the importance of accounting for implicit biases in the use of these systems.

21 pages. Also available in French