The report’s methodology is deliberately comparative. Rather than treating each national contest as an isolated case, the authors analyze the full electoral cycle, from campaign finance and media conditions through polling day operations to the announcement of results, with a particular focus on three dimensions: inclusivity, transparency and trust. Across nine chapters and 20 case studies, the research team assembled evidence on mis- and disinformation, gender-based violence, natural hazards, cyber attacks, electoral management malfunctions and the influence of money in politics. This cross-national design allows the authors to identify patterns that would be invisible in single-country studies, and it underpins one of the report’s core arguments: because challenges such as campaign disinformation and political polarization are not confined to any single nation, efforts to improve elections should be global as well as local.

Mis- and disinformation emerged as the most widespread threat of the year. Narratives of this kind were recorded in at least 62 percent of the 39 national elections monitored, a figure that underscores how thoroughly false and misleading content has penetrated contemporary campaigns. The documented examples were diverse in both form and delivery. In Moldova, Ireland, Cote d’Ivoire and Australia, researchers recorded allegations of electoral fraud, misleading claims targeting individual candidates, AI-generated deepfakes, cyber-enabled disinformation and misleading political content circulating on platforms such as WeChat and RedNote. The technical sophistication of some of these interventions, particularly the use of synthetic media, marks a qualitative shift from earlier cycles of rumor and smear, since AI-generated audio and video can now be produced cheaply and at scale, making it harder for voters and fact-checkers alike to distinguish authentic material from fabrication.

A second, closely related finding concerns gender-based violence in electoral contexts. The report recorded instances in at least 22 of the countries monitored, many of them committed, enabled or amplified through digital technologies. Women candidates and election officials in countries including Ecuador, Chile and Germany were targeted with misogynistic, racist and sexualized online attacks, ranging from coordinated harassment campaigns and explicit threats to manipulated images and sexualized AI-generated content. Researchers have long noted that such abuse functions as a form of political violence: it raises the personal cost of standing for office or administering elections, discourages women’s participation and can distort the candidate pool and public debate. The 2025 data suggest that digital platforms have become a primary vector for this abuse, allowing perpetrators to reach targets directly and to amplify attacks rapidly across networks.

Extreme weather added a third layer of pressure. Floods, heatwaves, tropical storms and other natural hazards affected 12 national and local elections in 11 countries monitored during the year, with elections in Ecuador, the Philippines, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines among those disrupted. The operational implications are considerable: severe weather can damage polling infrastructure, displace voters, impede the delivery of ballot materials and endanger the safety of election workers and observers. As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of such events, electoral management bodies are being forced to incorporate disaster preparedness into contingency planning, a domain that historically sat outside the core competencies of election administration. The report treats this as a growing structural risk to the continuity and credibility of democratic processes rather than a series of isolated incidents.

Campaign finance constituted a fourth persistent vulnerability. The report highlights ongoing irregularities involving campaign spending, weak oversight and uneven enforcement of existing laws, alongside interference by corporate and foreign interests. Data from the Electoral Integrity Project indicate that electoral campaigns have continued to be the poorest-performing stage of the electoral cycle, a finding with significant implications, since the campaign period is when parties and candidates compete most intensively for influence over voters. Australia, Albania and Romania are cited as notable examples where these pressures were visible in 2025. The report also points to broader strains on media integrity and campaign finance regulation, as declining press freedom and increasingly digital financial flows, including online advertising and platform-based spending, create regulatory blind spots that national oversight bodies struggle to monitor effectively.

Despite this formidable list of threats, the report’s overall assessment is not one of democratic collapse. Election quality, it finds, remained broadly stable across the countries studied. Equally important, the authors document how electoral management bodies and their partners are actively testing new responses, from changes to voting arrangements and the deployment of digital tools to regulatory reforms, risk-management measures and new forms of cooperation with civil society, technology companies and international organizations. Erik Asplund, Senior Advisor at International IDEA, emphasized the scale of the task facing administrators, noting that election authorities are being asked to manage increasingly complex risks, from disinformation and violence to natural hazards and operational disruption, and that anticipating these risks, strengthening institutional capacity and working with partners are essential to protecting elections and public trust.

The report is candid that not every initiative produced the intended results, and this honesty is part of its analytical value. By examining 20 case studies in detail, the authors are able to distinguish between reforms that strengthened resilience and those that fell short, offering practical lessons on how electoral management can evolve in response to changing political, technological and environmental conditions. Holly-Ann Garnet of the Royal Military College of Canada, a co-author of the report, framed the challenge in terms of innovation: new challenges to electoral integrity require innovative solutions, and the report highlights both the important steps being taken around the world to strengthen the quality of elections and the issues that will require attention moving forward. This orientation toward learning, rather than simply cataloguing failure, reflects the report’s underlying premise that comparative evidence can accelerate institutional improvement.

The 2025 review also builds directly on International IDEA’s earlier assessment of the 2024 election Super-Cycle, when more than 70 national-level elections focused global attention on the role of elections in shaping and maintaining democracy. Taken together, the two reports sketch a continuum: 2024 demonstrated the sheer scale of simultaneous democratic activity, while 2025 reveals the persistent, adaptive nature of the threats that accompany it. As Professor James observed, all countries, large or small, are facing challenges in ensuring that elections truly empower people, and the value of drawing lessons across borders is correspondingly high. For policymakers, election administrators and civil society organizations, the report’s message is that electoral integrity is no longer threatened by any single vector but by the interaction of information manipulation, political violence, financial influence and environmental disruption, and that defending it will require equally integrated, internationally coordinated responses.

Subject of Research: Global pressures on electoral integrity, including disinformation, gender-based violence, natural hazards and campaign finance, during national elections held in 2025

Article Title: Electoral integrity under pressure as elections faced persistent threats in 2025

Article References: Electoral integrity under pressure as elections faced persistent threats in 2025. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: electoral integrity, disinformation, deepfakes, gender-based violence, campaign finance, natural hazards, election administration, International IDEA, Electoral Integrity Project, democracy, press freedom, cyber attacks