Tech in the Ultimate Election Year

Around 49% of the entire world’s population will be going to the polls over the course of this year, if you include the EU parliamentary elections. 2024 isn’t just an election year, it’s arguably the most important one in history.

As a result, and since the UK’s very own general election is just over the horizon, it seems only right to talk about how technology in its various forms might impact the elections themselves.

Firstly, the elephant in the room; generative AI. There’s little doubt that this will play a role in numerous elections going on around the world this year, but just how it’ll be used is what we’re looking at.

Deepfakes of both Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak have already been doing the rounds on social media, as well as of both the contenders in the US presidential election, and one would expect this sort of interference to be turbocharged over the course of campaigns as a direct result of the exponential growth of generative AI usage in recent years.

However, less insidious uses of this technology are also being employed, with a congressional candidate in the US using Ashley, an AI campaign volunteer which apparently increases the one-to-one interactions in their district.

There was also an AI chat bot that was launched to sound like Dean Phillips, a short-lived contender to Joe Biden’s Democratic Nomination. Now, these are admittedly less high-profile politicians in perhaps less consequential elections than the most headline-grabbing ones, but the trends are certainly worth taking note of.

There’s also the potential for AI-generated imagery to be used in campaign messaging and social media. Though it’s unlikely that these will be a huge factor in elections in places like the UK, US, and EU, it could make appearances in elections in less developed nations. For example, both Argentinian presidential contenders in last year’s race generated posters for their respective campaigns with some very specific imagery.

Another interesting development could be the use of micro-influencers. The traditional way one would assume this would be achieved on a national scale would be by getting endorsements from some of the world’s largest celebrities, but there was an instance in a recent judicial election in the US where micro-influencers were deployed and the initial results seem to suggest it did have an effect.

Essentially, a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate backed by Democrats was supported by People First, a marketing agency, and A Better Wisconsin Together, a progressive organisation in the state, during her campaign for the open Justice’s seat.

People First decided to target online personalities with enough of a following to be termed an “influencer”, but without so much that they become indistinguishable from the brands who pay them to wear their products.

The idea was to push out messages on pro-abortion rights and gun control in a notoriously red state through people who had never pushed political messages in their careers before and, according to the CEO of the company, Curtis Houghland, 80-odd percent of the influencers they ended up working with had never worked for a brand or political cause previously.

One of the points he makes in explaining this strategy is that reach isn’t the be-all-or-end-all metric by which the potential for success can be measured in this field. What does matter, apparently, is that there is a pathos in the messaging from these influencers that you simply don’t get in normal (recent) political discourse.

With trust in politics and institutions so low at the moment, and not just in the US, it makes sense that one would look to gain voters’ trust without using the traditional levers.

One good example of this in practice is one of the posts made about this election by one of the influencers — in it, she says simply that the election is coming up and that issues such as abortion rights are on the ballot, encouraging people to make their voices heard on election day.

The result of this was record turnouts for a relatively low-profile state election, particularly in the younger generation.

In larger elections then, how could this be replicated at scale? Parties like Labour in the UK could look at these more locally-focused micro-influencers in swing seats they’re targeting in order to sway particularly the younger votes in their direction, as could the Democrats in particular swing counties of swing states where the US presidential race is likely to be won and lost.

On the other side of the spectrum, the UK’s Reform Party could utilise this in the seats they’re targeting to try and woo disenfranchised Conservative voters and the GOP in the US would likely replicate the tactic of the Democrats, given how tight that election is.

Whether it could tip the balance in favour of any party remains to be seen in a Western election, but in its limited real-world use thus far, it does seem to have an impact on overall turnout.

This same tactic is being used at possibly the largest of scales in the current Indian election, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is looking for a third consecutive term as the head of government.

At the time of writing this election is still ongoing, but Modi’s majority seems to have been reduced in part by a well-fought campaign from the opposition Congress Party, lots of which took place on social media.

In terms of election coverage, we have a slightly different story. This will be the first election in which many Gen-Z voters take part, meaning much of the coverage will have to differ from the traditional styles in order to attract viewers during debates, general coverage, and on election night itself.

The general consensus is that individuals who fall into the Gen-Z category are twice as likely to pay attention to graphic-heavy content compared to other generations.

It’s therefore likely, and important, that media coverage of the election takes this into account as much as possible to entice and galvanise that segment of the voting population into becoming more engaged in this election and the wider political sphere more generally.

Elections are of course rather complex beasts with lots of variables. The coverage of them, much like everything else these days, is therefore all about data.

Taking the US election as an example, it isn’t just the presidential race that will be taking place, it’s also the Senate, House of Representatives, governorships, sheriffs, mayors, and a plethora of local leadership positions that will be on the ballot on the same day.

It stands to reason, then, that the challenge in covering an election of that magnitude lies in how broadcasters dissect all that data and present it in an accessible and comprehensible manner.

Even in the UK, with 650 constituencies all up for grabs, there are vast swathes of data to be processed and shared with the viewing public. Awash in information, journalists and designers now wield powerful tools to make sense of it all.

These tools are data visualisation powerhouses, transforming wide-ranging, complex information into clear, bite-sized stories for our screens and artificial intelligence, always a key player nowadays, further refines this information, making it even more digestible for audiences.

Whatever happens, expect to see even grander versions of Jeremy Vine’s famous “Swing-O-Meter”, and the rest, during election night coverage.