The proliferation of false information and the rapid diffusion of generative artificial intelligence (AI) pose mounting challenges to democracy. Deepfakes, synthetic news, and AI-powered personalised political advertising are reshaping information ecosystems, raising concerns about how citizens evaluate elections and democratic institutions. This study asks: to what extent do attitudes toward AI and perceptions of false information dissemination shape voters’ evaluations of electoral integrity and satisfaction with democracy? We combine a macro-level comparative analysis using Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem v16) indicators, documenting trends in party and government dissemination of false information across Australia, the OECD, and the world from 2000 to 2025, with original micro-level evidence from the Australian Election Monitoring Survey Series (EMSS), a four-wave panel tracking over 7,300 Australians across the May 2025 federal election cycle. The comparative analyses show that party-level dissemination of false information has deteriorated globally, with Australia falling below the OECD average for the first time in 2023. Our public opinion analyses reveal substantial public anxiety during the 2025 Federal Election: 44% of Australians respondents believed AI would worsen electoral fairness, 45% were very concerned about AI spreading misinformation, and 47% reported encountering false information online during the campaign. Importantly, greater AI familiarity correlated with heightened rather than diminished concern about the negative effects of AI on democracy and electoral integrity. Similarly, familiarity increases support for increasing AI regulations. By contrast, reported exposure to false information reduces both electoral integrity perceptions and democratic satisfaction.

Professor Nicholas Biddle is Head of the School of Politics and International Relations. Prior to this, he was Deputy Director of the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, and head of the methods, survey, and evaluation programs in the centre. He has a Bachelor of Economics (Hons.) from the University of Sydney and a Master of Education from Monash University. He also has a PhD in Public Policy from the ANU, where he wrote his thesis on the benefits of and participation in education of Indigenous Australians. He previously held a Senior Research Officer and Assistant Director position in the Methodology Division of the Australian Bureau of Statistics. He is currently a Fellow of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute. Professor Biddle is a member of the Behavioural Economics Team for Australia (BETA) Academic Advisory Panel, (Prime Minister and Cabinet) and the Australian Statistics Advisory Council (Australian Bureau of Statistics).

Dr. Svitlana Chernykh is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Politics and International Relations. She is the recipient of the 2009 Paul Lazarsfeld Award for the Best Paper in Political Communication from the American Political Science Association and the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council (2016-2018). Her research focuses on democracy, comparative political institutions (elections, parties, constitutions), artificial intelligence, and genocide. Her work has been published in many of the discipline’s leading journals, including the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Political Communication, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Political Research Quarterly.  She is also the author of The Dilemma of Compliance: Political Parties and Post-Election Disputes (Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press, 2024).            

Dr. Constanza Sanhueza Petrarca is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the School of Politics and International Relations (SPIR) at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on democracy, elections, political behaviour and public opinion.  Constanza completed her PhD at the University of Mannheim and was awarded the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship by the European Union. Prior to joining ANU, she held research positions at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, and Sciences Po Paris.

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