Disinformation’s Decisive Impact on the 2024 Election Outcome

In the wake of Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ sweeping victories, multiple factors contributed to the electoral outcome: economic concerns, border security anxieties, cultural tensions, and a general sentiment that the Biden administration had steered the country in the wrong direction. While these traditional electoral issues played significant roles, the pervasive influence of disinformation in shaping voter perceptions proved equally consequential.

The 2024 campaign season witnessed systematic, organized efforts to manipulate public opinion through false narratives that gained tremendous traction. Fabricated stories about immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, hurricane relief funds diverted to undocumented immigrants, and doctored images showing Kamala Harris with Jeffrey Epstein circulated widely. A particularly notable example included manufactured sexual abuse allegations against vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz.

Foreign influence operations also penetrated the American information ecosystem. One viral video featured a man falsely claiming to be Haitian who stated he had voted illegally in two Georgia counties—later revealed to be Russian-produced disinformation.

These falsehoods gained traction through a perfect storm of distribution channels: social media platforms, humorous memes, mainstream media coverage, internet influencers, and amplification by candidates themselves during public appearances. The current information landscape, characterized by low public trust in traditional news sources and easy access to AI tools that can generate convincing fake content, created fertile ground for such manipulation.

Polling data suggests these disinformation campaigns significantly influenced voters’ candidate perceptions and views on key issues including immigration, crime, and the economy. On immigration specifically, Trump’s claims about uncontrolled border crossings and migrants monopolizing resources gained traction despite contradicting official statistics. Independent fact-checkers consistently debunked the claim that 10 million migrants had crossed the border under the Biden administration, noting that apprehension and release numbers were comparable to those during Trump’s presidency.

Similarly, crime statistics from the National Institute for Justice showed native-born Americans commit crimes at rates three times higher than immigrants—with documented figures of approximately 1,100 crimes per 100,000 people for native-born citizens versus 400 for undocumented immigrants. Nevertheless, persistent false narratives undermined Harris’s perceived effectiveness on crime and immigration.

Economic perception presented another striking disconnect. Americans reported overwhelmingly negative views about inflation and economic conditions despite relatively strong macroeconomic indicators. The international perspective highlighted this disparity, with The Economist magazine publishing a pre-election cover story describing the U.S. economy as “the envy of the world.” Yet voters maintained pessimistic economic outlooks and blamed Harris accordingly.

As political battles continue, addressing disinformation requires multi-faceted solutions. Social media platforms must implement meaningful content moderation practices rather than allowing rumors and falsehoods to proliferate unchecked. The emergence of accessible generative AI tools that can create convincing fake content has escalated the challenge, making digital literacy programs that teach information evaluation skills increasingly vital.

The contemporary political environment itself compounds these problems. In today’s highly polarized landscape, millions of Americans admit to intentionally sharing information they know to be false when it damages political opponents. Additionally, financial incentives drive disinformation, with websites, newsletters, and digital platforms profiting from subscriptions, advertising, and merchandise sales linked to sensationalized content.

Without addressing these underlying dynamics, disinformation will continue to distort public discourse, complicate governance, and undermine the factual basis needed for functional democracy. The 2024 election demonstrated that electoral outcomes increasingly depend not just on policy positions, but on which narratives—factual or not—dominate the information ecosystem.