Electoral Hallucinations: Safeguarding UK elections in the world of LLMs and AI chatbots
As AI chatbots and search tools rapidly become part of everyday information seeking, concerns are growing about the impact these systems are having on democratic trust and election integrity. This report examines the impact of five popular chatbots and text-based AI services on the UK’s information supply chain and democracy in real time. We reveal new evidence of the scale of these services’ unreliability during elections and make recommendations for the government to close the regulatory gap.
Researchers tested how the services ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Grok and Replika performed on a single day during the 2026 Scottish pre-election window and found:
- One third (34.1%) of responses across chatbots contained factual errors, whilst reliability varied significantly across services
- Errors included getting the date of election day wrong, giving wrong information about the need for voters to bring ID, “hallucinating” a candidate, and making up an expenses scandal on one occasion, and a nepotism scandal on another.
Polling carried out by Demos over the week before the 2026 local elections suggests the inaccuracies identified in chatbot responses could have severe implications for democracy across the UK:
- Use is widespread and growing: 1 in 5 adults (20%) report using an AI chatbot or AI search service to find information about the local and devolved elections in the run up to May 7th – that’s equivalent to over 10 million UK adults
- The public are concerned about accuracy: Half (47%) are worried about AI chatbots sharing inaccurate information about elections and candidates
- Public trust is very low: Half 49% do not trust AI chatbots for election-related information – and the services are as distrusted as social media (also 49% distrust).
This is the latest report in Demos Digital’s Epistemic Security programme that focuses on securing the UK’s information supply chains and building our democratic resilience to adverse influences. For further reading and Demos research on the integrity of the UK’s elections and the democratic implications of generative AI, see our previous publications: