Influence operations targeting elections

Domestic networks

Many election networks in platform reports originate inside the country they target. Meta said in May 2024 that the majority of EU-focused inauthentic behaviour it had disrupted so far was domestic, and that most clusters focused on local elections ¹.

Meta's Q1 2024 report linked a Bangladesh network covering elections to individuals associated with the Awami League party and a Bangladeshi non-profit ¹. It linked a Croatia network focused on national elections to individuals associated with the youth organisation of the HDZ party ¹.

Meta's Q1 2025 report described a network that originated in and targeted Romania. It had 658 Facebook accounts and spent about $177,000 on ads ³. Meta said a Ghana-based network linked to the UAE firm DigitSol was removed before the December 2024 election ².

OpenAI said in October 2024 that a Rwanda-origin network promoting the Rwandan Patriotic Front on X was the only one it saw focused exclusively on elections. It banned the accounts in early July 2024 ⁴.

Foreign networks

Microsoft's Threat Analysis Center said on 9 August 2024 that an Iranian network it calls Storm-2035 ran covert news sites aimed at US voters on both ends of the political spectrum ⁷. OpenAI reported generated comments and articles about the US election from STORM-2035 in late August 2024 ⁴.

OpenAI said in June 2025 that a Russia-origin case, Helgoland Bite, targeted German-speaking audiences during the 2025 German election through Telegram, X and a Pravda website ⁵. Google's Q1 2025 bulletin listed YouTube channels, ad accounts and a domain linked to a Germany-based actor posting about German elections ⁶.

EU election findings

The 2nd EEAS report, covering December 2022 to November 2023, analysed 33 election-related incidents across nine elections, including Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo ⁸.

The 3rd EEAS report recorded 42 Russian FIMI cases around the June 2024 European Parliament elections. It listed Moldova's elections and EU accession referendum, Taiwan's presidential election and the US presidential election among other major targets ⁹.

The 4th EEAS report, published in March 2026, says Russia targeted elections in Germany, Poland, Romania, Moldova, the Czech Republic and Côte d'Ivoire in 2025 ¹⁰. It named Armenia's June 2026 parliamentary elections as an upcoming target ¹⁰.

Reported reach

OpenAI rates operations on the Breakout Scale, where Category One means spread in one community on one platform. It said all election-related operations it saw in 2024 were Category Two ⁴. Microsoft said in August 2024 it had not yet seen significant social media amplification of the Storm-2035 sites ⁷.