WASHINGTON, July 25 — The historical record shows that between 1946 and 2000, the United States intervened in 81 foreign elections, while the Soviet Union or Russia intervened in 36, according to research by Dov H. Levin detailed in his 2020 book “Meddling in the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions.” Combined, these superpowers directly influenced the outcome of 117 out of 938 competitive national-level executive elections worldwide — roughly one in nine. Over two-thirds of these operations were covert.
Foreign electoral intervention, or FEI, is defined as an attempt by a government to influence the elections of another country. Common methods include backing a preferred party or candidate, harming the electoral chances of another side, elevating disruptive candidates, or exacerbating polarization through amplifying or disseminating misinformation or disinformation.
Unlike military force or economic coercion, FEI aims to affect how citizens vote rather than directly imposing regime change. However, some methods, such as manipulating voter registration records, violate the target country’s sovereignty.
Mechanisms and Impact
Scholars and organizations such as the United States National Intelligence Council distinguish between interference — which violates domestic laws, for example by disrupting vote counting, providing illicit funds, or launching cyberattacks — and influence, which includes legal means such as public threats, endorsements, preferential trade terms, or revealing legally held damaging information. The research emphasizes that FEI almost always requires the consent, cooperation, or assistance of a domestic actor such as a political party, candidate, media member, or public figure.
Levin’s 2020 study found that on average, an electoral intervention in favor of one side increased its vote share by about three percentage points. This effect was large enough to have potentially changed results in seven out of 14 U.S. presidential elections after 1960.
A 2018 study by the same author reported that FEI determined the identity of the winner in “many cases” and provided suggestive evidence that such interventions increased the risk of democratic breakdown in targeted states.
Global Patterns in 2018
A 2019 study by Lührmann et al. at the Varieties of Democracy Institute in Sweden tracked the most intense electoral interventions of 2018. The data show that the highest levels of intervention via false information on key political issues were conducted by China in Taiwan and by Russia in Latvia. Next highest levels were recorded in Bahrain, Qatar, and Hungary.
The lowest levels of such activity were observed in Trinidad and Tobago, Switzerland, and Uruguay. The theoretical framework, as outlined in a 2012 study by Corstange and Marinov, identifies two types of foreign electoral intervention: partisan intervention, which supports one side, and process intervention, which backs democratic rules irrespective of the winner.
