Democracy faces its greatest stress test in decades. The year 2024 was described by many analysts as the most consequential election year in modern history, with more than 4 billion people in over 70 countries going to the polls to elect their leaders. From the United States to India, Mexico to the European Parliament, and Indonesia to South Africa, the outcomes of these elections are being shaped by artificial intelligence disinformation, the rise of populist movements, and deep public skepticism about the ability of traditional political institutions to address the real concerns of ordinary citizens.
4 Billion Voters and Global Democracy
The sheer scale of 2024’s global electoral activity was unprecedented. For the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population was eligible to vote in national elections in a single year. The outcomes across these diverse elections told a complex story about the state of global democracy. In some countries, democratic norms held firm and power transferred peacefully based on the will of voters. In others, incumbents used legal manipulation, media control, and electoral irregularities to maintain power despite genuine popular opposition. And in several major democracies, the election of populist leaders with authoritarian tendencies raised serious questions about the resilience of democratic institutions.
India’s general election, the largest democratic exercise in human history with nearly 970 million eligible voters, returned Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power for a third term, though with a reduced parliamentary majority that required him to govern in coalition. Indonesia elected a new president in a closely watched test of democracy in the world’s fourth-most-populous country. Mexico elected its first female president, a historic milestone for a country with a long history of male political dominance. And in the European Parliament elections, right-wing populist parties made significant gains, shifting the ideological balance of the EU’s primary legislative body.
AI Disinformation Threatens Elections
Artificial intelligence has become a powerful tool for those seeking to manipulate public opinion and undermine faith in democratic processes. Deepfake videos, which use AI to create convincing fabricated footage of politicians saying or doing things they never actually said or did, are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from genuine recordings. AI-generated text can produce thousands of convincing social media posts, fake news articles, and targeted political messages at essentially zero marginal cost, enabling disinformation operations of unprecedented scale.
Multiple elections in 2024 were affected by significant AI-generated disinformation campaigns. Fabricated audio recordings of politicians making inflammatory statements circulated widely in several countries before the elections, causing confusion and potentially influencing voter behavior. Coordinated networks of AI-generated social media accounts amplified divisive content and conspiracy theories, making it more difficult for voters to access reliable information. Regulators and technology platforms are struggling to respond to these threats, and the pace of AI capability improvement is making the challenge more severe with each passing election cycle.
Populism and Democratic Backsliding
The populist wave that began in the mid-2010s with Brexit, Trump’s first election, and the rise of anti-establishment parties across Europe has continued and in some ways intensified. Populist leaders around the world share a common rhetoric that positions them as champions of ordinary people against corrupt elites, dishonest media, and unresponsive institutions. This rhetoric resonates powerfully with voters who feel left behind by economic globalization, threatened by rapid cultural change, and dismissed by establishment politicians who seem more concerned with the interests of corporations and cosmopolitan elites than with the concrete concerns of working-class communities.
The challenge for democracy is distinguishing between legitimate populist critiques of elite capture and institutional failure, which deserve to be heard and addressed, and authoritarian impulses that use populist language as cover for concentrating power, undermining checks and balances, and silencing opposition. History shows that democracies rarely die in dramatic coups. They more often erode gradually through the accumulation of small institutional compromises, each individually justifiable, that collectively hollow out the protections and norms that make democratic governance meaningful.
The Resilience of Democracy
Despite the genuine challenges facing democratic institutions in 2025, there are also powerful reasons for cautious optimism. Voter turnout in 2024 was high across many of the major democracies that held elections, suggesting continuing public engagement with the political process. Civil society organizations, independent journalism, and judicial institutions have shown significant resilience in defending democratic norms under pressure. And the evidence from countries that have experienced democratic backsliding, such as Hungary and Turkey, suggests that democratic regression is not irreversible and that citizen mobilization can push back effectively against authoritarian consolidation. The future of democracy is not predetermined. It depends on the choices made by citizens, leaders, institutions, and the technology companies whose platforms shape the information environment in which democratic deliberation takes place.
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