Only 4% of voters say they went to an AI tool for election information in the past month. But 38% say they got election information from a Google search AI summary, and about half of those didn't realize the summary was AI-generated. That gap is where this episode of the Campaign Trend Podcast starts. Eric Wilson talks with B.J. Martino, president and CEO of The Tarrance Group and part of the bipartisan research team behind the AAPC Foundation's new national survey of likely voters on artificial intelligence.
Martino calls the second number ambient use: voters receiving AI-generated content without seeking it out. Purposeful use is smaller but not trivial — asked whether they had ever used AI for election or campaign information, about one in five said yes. The numbers also moved when the survey named specific tools, like ChatGPT, Claude, Alexa and Siri, instead of asking about “AI.”
The partisan split is in attitude, not usage. Republicans and Democrats report using AI tools at similar rates, but on whether AI will do more harm than good, Republicans are roughly even while Democrats are net 40 points negative. By age the pattern is less linear than expected: younger voters use these tools most, and some of the youngest cohort is also among the most skeptical.
On what campaigns may do with AI, voters draw their hardest line at content that manufactures reality. Synthetic video or audio of an opponent was effectively universally unacceptable, with or without a disclosure label; even AI-generated audio of a campaign's own candidate drew broad objection. Back-end uses, like help drafting fundraising copy, met far less resistance. Credibility runs the same direction — social media was the most credible source of election information for 11% of voters, AI for 1%.
Martino's practical advice for the closing weeks is unglamorous: find out what the search summaries say about your campaign, fix the sources they draw from, and keep original source material ready, because “that video is AI-generated” is becoming the new accusation that a campaign ran a push poll. In 2026, the AI question for campaigns is less about which tools you use than about whether you can prove what's real.