Although citizens have the right to political participation without interference, the truth is that disinformation aimed at disrupting elections and eroding democracy has been a constant in recent decades. Who is behind this phenomenon? Are we being manipulated only by external actors, or also by internal ones? What are the narratives, strategies, and timing of electoral disinformation? We give you the answers in this article.

“Disinformation is used in a systematic, organized way, and with a deeper understanding of how voters make decisions, which allows that disinformation to be specifically targeted at changing voting intentions,” explains Rafael Rubio Núñez, Professor of Constitutional Law at the Complutense University of Madrid and director of the Research Group on Technology and Democracy. In other words, citizens’ decisions regarding electoral processes are increasingly subject to organized strategies aimed at manipulating their voting intentions through disinformation campaigns that corrupt free choice and undermine democratic processes.

Examples have been occurring since 2016. That year, the British voted by a narrow margin in favor of Brexit after a campaign that was later revealed to have suffered from serious disinformation interference. Russia acted through social media and media funding to spread false information in support of the UK leaving the EU. But there wasn’t only external interference — political parties used lies and distortions to persuade voters and paid personal data processing companies to influence the public through personalized messages appearing on their social networks, especially Facebook. The pro-Brexit campaign paid up to three million pounds to the digital marketing firm AggregateIQ to carry out these kinds of activities.

That same year, during the U.S. presidential campaign, a new political style emerged in which using lies shamelessly became a distinctive and successful hallmark: that of Donald Trump. During that campaign, the Republican candidate not only made exhaustive use of lies and distortions (or “alternative facts,” as his team described them), and gave credence to the most outlandish conspiracy theories, but his campaign also relied on data mining companies like Cambridge Analytica, which unlawfully obtained information from 50 million Facebook users in the U.S. to later use it for psychological manipulation of voters.

We have also seen other leaders rise to power using similar strategies: Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Javier Milei in Argentina… “Since 2016, it’s very hard to find electoral processes where disinformation has not played a role. It probably hasn’t been decisive in all cases, but it has been incorporated by parties and leaders as just another part of the political debate,” says Rubio.

The storming of the Capitol in 2021 by supporters of Donald Trump, convinced that Joe Biden had stolen the election, and the takeover of the Three Powers Plaza in Brasília in 2023 under similar accusations against Lula da Silva are two paradigmatic examples of the effects of electoral disinformation. More recently, at the end of 2024, Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the results of the first round of the elections following the declassification of documents revealing “aggressive Russian hybrid attacks” during the presidential campaign.

Electoral disinformation can be a tool used by both internal and external actors. On the international level, it is used as a weapon of interference and destabilization by foreign agents, a strategy known as Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI). Russia has been one of the most pointed out and detected actors as a source or promoter of FIMI campaigns, particularly against Ukraine, according to the latest report from the European External Action Service (EEAS) on FIMI, published in January 2024.

“Russia has a specific department specialized in electoral interference, as was seen in the 2016 U.S. elections, in the reports made later by Congress, but it has been repeatedly seen in all European elections held since then, where there is clear evidence of Russian interference during the electoral processes,” says Rubio. But they are not the only ones. China, by a large margin, is the country in the world that instigates the most disinformation campaigns, followed by Iran. Russia would be the third country most involved in this strategy, according to 2020 data from the Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation. The same report also reveals that disinformation campaigns from abroad are common. In fact, of the 25 countries that use disinformation the most, 15 of them are also the primary targets of propaganda strategies from abroad.

In the EEAS report, 750 FIMI incidents were investigated that occurred between December 1, 2022, and November 30, 2023. The most frequently targeted country was Ukraine, with 160 recorded cases. The United States was attacked in 58 of these cases, followed by Poland (33), Germany (31), France (25), and Serbia (23). In total, the observed FIMI activity targeted 53 different countries, highlighting that it is a global phenomenon not only directed at countries, but also at organizations, groups, and individuals. 30% of the attacks were aimed at 149 organizations. Primarily the EU (19%), NATO (15%), Ukraine’s armed forces (14%), the UN (3%), as well as media outlets like Euronews (3%), Reuters (2%), Deutsche Welle (2%), and the New York Times (2%).

Electoral disinformation is also used by internal actors. Government agencies are increasingly using computational propaganda to shape public opinion. The ‘2020 Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation’ found evidence in sixty-two countries that state actors, such as public media, communication ministries, defense ministries, or police forces, had used computational propaganda to shape public attitudes. The same study also found evidence of how political parties in sixty-one countries worldwide used computational propaganda tools and techniques as part of their campaigns.

“Disinformation has become a normal tool of electoral campaigns,” says Rubio, who warns that often it is forgotten that, above all, “it has an internal element, direct or indirect. Direct because, many times, it is only national actors who promote disinformation as a working tool in the electoral process, as, for example, in Brazil during the 2022 elections, when it became an internal threat to the electoral process. And indirect because, in the end, external interference requires internal actors to amplify and give credibility or validity to that external disinformation.”

For them to be truly effective, disinformation narratives must adapt to each specific electoral context, but the EDMO report on ‘Narratives of Disinformation during the 2023 Elections in Europe‘, which analyzed the discourse of electoral disinformation in the 12 European countries that held presidential or parliamentary elections that year, concludes that one theme stood out above the others: questioning the electoral system. “The suggestion of electoral fraud or alleged unfair practices that would invalidate the election results seems particularly widespread, with the apparent goal of delegitimizing democratically elected representatives,” states the report.

In Spain, for example, which held general elections on July 23, 2023, multiple falsehoods circulated to question the legitimacy of the process. One of the most viral was a manipulated video of presenter David Cantero denouncing a supposed rigged election, when in reality the audio was false. An invented image also spread, attributing fictitious results to the company Indra, showing Vox winning 125 seats; the company denied its authenticity. Another false claim was that the Central Electoral Board had declared the results invalid and ordered a new count, which was entirely false. Additionally, a supposed manipulation by the PSOE was reported without evidence, claiming that trains in Valencia were interrupted to hinder voting, when it was actually a technical issue officially communicated.

Other main issues detected in the EDMO report in the majority of electoral processes were the war in Ukraine, issues related to climate change, EU institutions and laws, the economy, gender issues, and those concerning the LGBTQ+ community, among others.

Electoral disinformation campaigns have three strategic characteristics: they take advantage of current events, are multiplatform, and begin to be created months before the start of the campaigns. The SEAE report states that in 21.3% of the FIMI incidents analyzed, existing attention surrounding events such as political summits, elections, emergencies, or official visits was exploited. In this regard, the event that triggered the most FIMI cases in the report sample was the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

On the other hand, coordination between platforms is the usual modus operandi in FIMI incidents. Over 4,000 channels were active 9,800 times in the 750 incidents investigated in the SEAE report. These channels can be websites, profiles, groups, and social media pages. The most frequently involved platforms were Telegram and X (formerly Twitter). However, FIMI activity was observed on nearly all platforms.

FIMI agents prepare their operations to attack elections well in advance and gradually intensify their attacks. According to the EASA report, FIMI actions are divided into four phases:

1. Months before the elections: This phase can start up to a year in advance and involves the creation and organization of infrastructure and assets to influence information consumption in the period leading up to the elections. Over the months prior to the elections, these actors “recruit” and interact with their audiences through clickbait or exploiting last-minute events to gain legitimacy. Attacks targeting candidates and political parties may also begin in this period. During this phase, hacking activities are also to be expected, such as operations to access or compromise internal information systems in order to facilitate attacks closer to the election date.
2. Election month: During this time, FIMI activity increases. In this phase, the networks created are activated to launch attacks aimed at undermining the reputation of candidates and political parties. Hacking attacks have also been detected in this phase, along with preparations for later-phase attacks to create distrust in the integrity of the elections.
3. 72 hours before voting: During this period, FIMI attacks take advantage of the final moments to influence participation or voting direction. Incidents occurring during this period are particularly critical, given the limited time to react, defend, or respond to the threat. During this period, operations to sow distrust in the electoral process also intensify.
4. Post-election: Incidents occurring in this period can be crucial, as they can trigger calls to action and violent acts aimed at delegitimizing the election results. Additionally, FIMI incidents in this phase can have a broader goal, seeking to undermine democracies from within and attack their core principles.

The impact of these campaigns on election results, whether from external or internal sources, is difficult to quantify. “In the U.S. elections, disinformation favoring Donald Trump has been detected, and this can be proven. But, can it be said that Trump won because of disinformation? That is very difficult to prove,” explains Pablo Hernández, academic research coordinator at Maldita.es. However, the expert argues that what can be stated is that the amount of disinformation increases significantly as the elections approach. “Disinformers make an effort to generate and spread large waves of disinformation around elections, and this trend is on the rise. If they thought the disinformation they spread had no effect, they would have no reason to keep doing it,” argues Hernández.

The danger of this type of disinformation is that it goes beyond discrediting a party or an ideology, as it questions the functioning of the system. “If citizens stop trusting the functioning of democracy, everything else loses its meaning,” says Hernández.

“Undermining democracy does not necessarily mean destroying it, it means leveling it to other systems of government,” reflects Rubio. “There is an equalizing process that places democracy on the same level as other, more authoritarian or more totalitarian systems of government, and this benefits those who promote this type of disinformation activities because it legitimizes them in front of their people,” he states. On the other hand, weakening institutions and those who represent them, sowing doubts about their legitimacy, causes them to “lose strength in decision-making, a lower prestige, a lower reputation,” and when a state actor is weakened, it becomes easier to influence them or defeat them.

European diplomacy warns that FIMI is “a threat to security, as well as a threat to society and democracy,” and states that the response repertoire must reflect this complexity. In its report, it argues that the fight against electoral disinformation requires a coordinated strategy that combines long-term preventive measures with reactive responses during critical moments, and it describes them in three phases:

1. Before the elections, it is key to strengthen social resilience, improve media literacy, and prepare detection tools, as well as establish alliances between institutions, media, platforms, and civil society.
2. During the electoral process, monitoring and early warning mechanisms must be activated to detect manipulative campaigns in their initial phases. Reactive responses should be adapted to the context: from ignoring to avoid amplification, to containing their spread, minimizing visibility through content moderation, or redirecting attention to verified information.
3. After the elections, it is crucial to evaluate what happened: what worked, what can be improved, and how to strengthen capabilities for the future. Sharing learnings among involved actors and updating strategies will help protect democratic integrity against new threats.