AI for candidates. A brief history of election campaigns

From Pompeii to artificial intelligence: this is how one might summarise the two-thousand-year history of election campaigns. In the run-up to the latest US mid-term elections, in particular, the Wesleyan Media Project – which monitors political advertising – counted no fewer than 220 election adverts using AI-generated content, at a cost of over 137 million dollars. It must be said that 88 per cent of these were from the Republican camp: which, given the results, does not seem to indicate a particularly fruitful investment, although clearly, with the Trump factor at play, there was little that could be done, whether with artificial intelligence or natural intelligence. However, according to another study on the subject, conducted by the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC), 83 per cent of campaign strategists and political advisers regularly use AI, and at least 38 per cent of voters received information about the elections via an AI-generated research summary. And here, too, the Democratic winners are said to have benefited. The most enthusiastic advocates therefore argue that this technology offers a decisive advantage for campaigns. Others, however, fear that the few remaining ethical constraints are being ignored. Recently, a cybersecurity firm did indeed uncover dozens of websites apparently generated by artificial intelligence that mimicked local newspapers, designed to deceive chatbots and generate media coverage favourable to certain congressional candidates.

Even more blatant are the deepfakes. When discussing the issue, The Economist cited as examples, on the one hand, the advert in which James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Texas who has championed transgender rights, appears dressed as a woman and sings about transgender children to the tune of “The Sound of Music”; on the other hand, the advert in which Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Michigan of Egyptian origin, plays a board game and laughs at cards bearing the words ‘Death to America’ and ‘Let’s celebrate 11 September’. There may even be a Russian disinformation network behind a series of videos in which an alleged former student falsely accuses the aforementioned Talarico of sexual offences. In other cases, defamatory adverts show Democratic candidates saying things they have never said, sometimes without clear warnings that they have been generated by AI. In Italy, at least, the images of Vannacci as a Roman emperor, feeding political opponents to wild beasts at the Colosseum, are unrealistic enough to leave no room for doubt – though questions do arise as to who produced the footage: whether it was the general’s supporters or his opponents. In any case, both Talarico and El-Sayed went on to win by a landslide.

Yet here, a two-thousand-year-old circle is closing. It is the walls of Pompeii that have, in fact, handed down to us inscriptions which are the oldest documented example of an election campaign. Among the 2,500 propaganda ‘posters’ painted on the walls in black or red—presumably commissioned from professional ‘scriptores’—stand exhortations such as Ennium Sabinum aedilem pomarii rogant (‘The greengrocers ask for Marcus Ennius Sabinus as aedile’); ‘Iulium Polybium aedilem oro vos faciatis. Panem bonum fert’, ‘I beg you to elect Gaius Julius Polybius as aedile. He bakes good bread” – there was also a suspicious “Sabinum et Rufum aediles dignos re publica Valentinus cum discentes suos rogat”, a “Valentinus, together with his students, asks that Sabinus and Rufus be elected as aediles, worthy of public office”, in which the use of “cum” with the accusative (instead of the correct ablative) seems to suggest some doubt as to his competence as a teacher. Also noteworthy is Aulum Vettium Firmum aedilem oro vos faciatis dignum rei publicae. Pilicrepi facite: “I beg you to elect Aulus Vettius Firmus as aedile, a man worthy of public office. Ball-players, elect him.” It remains to be seen whether the aforementioned ‘Pilicrepi’ should be regarded as a prestigious category; if so, the most faithful translation might be ‘even the true sportsmen vote for him’; or perhaps not, in which case it would become something like ‘the ball-players vote for him’. A rudimentary precursor to the deepfake, however, may be ‘Marcum Cerrinium Vatiam aedilem oro vos faciatis, seribibi universi rogant’: ‘I beg you to elect Marcus Cerrinius Vatia as aedile. All the night-owl drinkers are asking for it.’ Other inscriptions add the ‘dormientes universi’ – all the sleepyheads – to his supporters. The ‘furunculi’, petty thieves: or perhaps, here too, the translation that best captures the spirit might be a non-literal ‘chicken thieves’. And the ‘sicari’, hired assassins. And the ‘drapetae’, runaway slaves.

The invention of the printing press then gave rise to pamphlets, though these were more often used for religious and philosophical controversies than for political debates in the modern sense. On the other hand, as early as the 18th century, in England, Revolutionary France and the newly formed United States, election campaigns began to be waged using newspapers and rallies, and as early as 1755, the whole affair was satirised in "The Humours of an Election": four oil paintings by William Hogarth, later widely circulated as engravings, depicting an election in Oxfordshire the previous year. "An Election Entertainment" depicts an election banquet organised by the Whig candidates in a tavern, whilst outside the Tories protest, parading an anti-Semitic caricature in opposition to the law on the naturalisation of Jews, which the Tory government itself had passed in 1753. One of the two candidates is kissing a decidedly unattractive-looking woman, whilst a young girl tries to snatch his ring; the other, meanwhile, is forced to listen to an importunate drunkard. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the table, the mayor has fallen ill from eating too many oysters, whilst the campaign manager is struck by a brick hurled through the window by the Tory crowd. In Canvassing for Votes, the hunt for votes is depicted, with agents from both parties attempting to bribe an innkeeper. In "The Polling", a madman and a dying man are taken to the polling station. Finally, "Chairing the Member" depicts the celebrations of the victorious Tory candidates and their supporters, who scare off a herd of pigs.

These are scenes more or less familiar across the Atlantic too: one of the most widely held theories as to why Edgar Allan Poe was found on 3 October 1849, delirious on the streets of Baltimore, only to die four days later in hospital, is that the great writer had been plied with drink by one of the gangs who used this method to ensure the same voter cast ballots at multiple polling stations. There were no voter registration certificates; it was enough to swear that one had not already voted. The United States, however, soon became the great testing ground for new election campaign techniques, and has essentially remained so ever since. For example, as early as 1789, there is evidence of a song used in George Washington’s election campaign. It was titled ‘Follow Washington’. “The day has come / my verses flow / and follow, follow Washington / He’ll lead the way, lads / where he commands, we’ll obey / through rain and snow, night and day / guided by Liberty, lads / guided by Liberty”. It is the first of the tracks featured on Presidential Campaign Songs, 1789–1996: an album recorded by folk singer Oscar Brand in 1999, featuring 43 songs used in the election campaigns of elected presidents, ranging from George Washington to Bill Clinton.

In 1836, presidential candidate William Henry Harrison was the first to use the railway to campaign for votes. In May 1844, the Democratic Party convention in Baltimore to select the presidential candidate also marked the first use of the telegraph in an election campaign. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the first presidential candidate to use the telegraph strategically as a tool for coordinating his campaign, enabling him to remain in constant contact with his supporters across the country. In 1880, James Garfield transformed the library of his home in Mentor, Ohio, into a fully-fledged mobile telegraph office, enabling his staff to monitor election results district by district on polling night, thereby eliminating the delays associated with the postal service. In 1896, William McKinley and his campaign manager Mark Hanna organised the famous ‘front porch campaign’, using an extensive network of telegraphs and telephones to coordinate the arrival of delegations of voters in Canton, Ohio.

Lincoln had already been a pioneer in the invention of the debate – later known precisely as the ‘American-style’ debate – when, in 1858, as a candidate for a Senate seat in Illinois, he and the Democrat Stephen Douglas faced off in public debates on no fewer than seven occasions, travelling from one place to another by train. Douglas won, but two years later the contest was repeated at presidential level, and on that occasion it was Lincoln who prevailed. However, it was the American model that inspired the British Liberal leader William Gladstone to organise, in the Scottish constituency of Midlothian in 1879–80, what is considered the first modern election campaign in European history, involving journeys by train to hold rallies at venues where the press had already been summoned. The first use of radio for election campaigns also dates back to the United States, in 1920, during the election that saw the victory of the Republican Warren G. Harding; however, it was on 12 March 1933 that Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered the first of his ‘Fireside Chats’ on the radio, in which the President addressed the public as ‘my friends’. This was the first example of a form of political communication that modern technology now makes it possible to broadcast live to an entire nation.

In 1952, Republican candidate Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower was a pioneer in strategically using short television adverts to build his public image. Meanwhile, in 1948 there had been a radio debate between Thomas Dewey and Harold Stassen in the Republican primaries, and in 1956 one between Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver in the Democratic primaries. But it was on television, on 25 September 1960, that the first true head-to-head clash between the presidential candidates of the two major parties took place. Kennedy’s telegenic appearance is widely credited with giving him an edge over Nixon, who not only appeared less photogenic but was also visibly suffering from a knee ailment. He fared slightly better in the three subsequent debates, but when one considers the mere 112,827-vote margin between the two, out of an electorate of 68,895,628 people, it becomes clear that Nixon had put everything on the line on that occasion. Shortly afterwards, on 11 September 1960, the first ‘Tribuna Elettorale’ was also broadcast on Rai.

In Italy too, between the end of the First Republic and the start of the Second, the ‘fax generation’ rose to prominence, though their chosen medium was soon eclipsed by the Internet. Whilst the Internet became a mass phenomenon from 1996 onwards, it was not until 2008 that Barack Obama was elected by relying heavily on social media in general, and on Facebook and YouTube in particular. It was also on Facebook that the Five Star Movement gained ground in Italy; in 2016, Donald Trump won his election through Twitter; and in 2018, Jair Bolsonaro won in Brazil through WhatsApp. Meanwhile, video games also began to be used: a form of political ‘gamification’ pioneered, for example, by Antonio Decaro of the PD, mayor of Bari from 2014 to 2024 and now president of the Puglia Region, when he launched a ‘Mission Bari’, downloadable free of charge on iOS and Android smartphones or playable online on his website, in which players helped the traffic wardens remove illegally parked cars along the seafront, remove graffiti left by hooligans and dispose of abandoned rubbish bags. There was also ‘Vinci Salvini’ and other content on the Rousseau Platform. In France, a game called ‘Fiscal Kombat’ featured Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s alter ego slapping various politicians, industrialists and bankers and forcing them to return the money they had taken abroad.

Artificial intelligence represents a further step forward, one that is by no means limited to deepfakes, the modern-day successor to the ‘seribibi’ of Pompeii. ‘Beneath the surface,’ observes The Economist, ‘artificial intelligence is transforming the art of election campaigning in more subtle ways. Candidates are using this technology to run more effective campaigns, analyse voter data and create personalised messages’. El-Sayed himself has invested $170,000 in Daisychain: a company offering an AI-based platform that enables personalised conversations with voters via text message. Swing Left, a mobilisation platform within the Democratic Party established in 2017 in response to Donald Trump’s first victory, uses AI to enhance traditional door-to-door canvassing on a limited budget. Its volunteers record voice memos summarising conversations with voters, and the AI-powered software analyses hundreds of these recordings to help campaigns personalise their messages. “AI allows us to understand the nuances of each voter much better,” explained Swing Left’s executive director, Yasmin Radjy.

‘Sloptimisation’ is the term used to describe the technique of influencing what chatbots say about candidates, based precisely on the observation that an increasing number of voters are turning to artificial intelligence for information. Election campaign websites are therefore increasingly being designed in such a way that AI agents can extract information. Even adding this information to a candidate’s profile on Ballotpedia – a sort of Wikipedia for election experts – can influence AI-based chatbots. However, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank, has found that the leading chatbots provided incorrect, incomplete or outdated answers to more than a quarter of basic questions about the mid-term elections. This is not merely because so-called artificial intelligence is often still rather “dumb,” as is frequently demonstrated by those who test it by asking questions on topics they are fully familiar with. VisionHeight, a cybersecurity firm, recently uncovered dozens of websites apparently generated by AI that impersonate local newspapers, designed to deceive and generate media coverage favourable to certain congressional candidates. Once elected, however, these candidates will find that artificial intelligence itself is one of the key issues they will have to tackle.

A historian who rose to fame with a bestseller in which he explained how the British Empire had shaped the modern world (and who was accused by Hobsbawm of defending colonialism), a scathingly critical voice against the West’s obsession with self-flagellation, Niall Ferguson has now written an essay in Foreign Affairs, co-authored with researcher Lisa Klaassen and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in which they argue that it is precisely dominance over chips, models, energy and funding that will enable Beijing and Washington to shape global innovation across multiple sectors, in a way that future historians might recognise as a new kind of empire. A challenge posed by artificial intelligence, tackled by politicians selected using artificial intelligence? However, following the news of the results, global stock markets plummeted and the dollar hit its lowest level in a month, due to alarm amongst investors regarding potential stricter regulations for technology companies and the artificial intelligence sector, whose growth has fuelled global markets in recent years. Shares in the leading AI-related companies have, in fact, fallen. “A landslide victory for the Democrats would mean greater regulatory scrutiny of technology and artificial intelligence firms, along with a higher likelihood of political deadlock,” said Prashant Newnaha, senior interest rate strategist at TD Securities.