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Open Electoral Integrity Dataset • 2026 U.S. Elections

Deepfake AI & "Surrogate AI Laundering" in Political Campaigns

An open-access empirical dataset and multi-layered harvesting methodology tracking generative AI attack ads, voice-clone robocalls, and partisan influencer "slopaganda" in the 2026 U.S. elections—designed to capture both disclosed campaign spots and undisclosed surrogate AI videos that evade traditional paywalled ad-tracking archives.

99
Influencer / Surrogate AI Videos (52 with Native Synthetic Badge)
58
Reddit Battleground Threads & ~1,200 Voter Debate Comments
89
Broadcast / Campaign AI Videos (82 with Full Spoken Transcripts)
28 States
Statutory Political AI Disclaimer Laws Mapped (2024–2026)

1. Open Datasets, Blueprints & Harvester Scripts

All datasets (UTF-8 CSV) and Python harvesting scripts are publicly archived in this repository under projects/deepfake_ai_s_impact_on_political_campaigns/:

Influencer & Surrogate AI Videos (Crowd-Scored)

n = 99 short-form videos. Captures partisan meme collectives (Dilley Meme Team, Menace Studio, @MrReaganUSA, Daily Soak) and PAC spots, enriched with YouTube's native Altered or synthetic content flag and viewer comment AI callout ratios.

Download CSV (n=99) ↓

Reddit Battleground Threads & Voter Debates

n = 58 threads (~1,200 comments). Harvested via the Arctic Shift API across r/texas, r/Georgia, r/Maine, r/wisconsin, r/Ohio, and r/YAPms, surfacing native v.redd.it deepfakes and multi-paragraph voter legal/epistemic debates.

Download CSV (n=58) ↓

Political AI Videos + Spoken Transcripts

n = 89 videos (82 full transcripts). Political campaign AI ads and local TV investigative segments matched against state disclaimer queries, with complete spoken transcripts extracted via youtube_transcript_api.

Download CSV (n=89) ↓

28-State Statutory AI Disclaimer Laws

n = 28 states (2024–2026). Reference table mapping each state's bill/statute citation, regulatory mechanism (mandatory disclosure vs. 30/60/90-day pre-election ban), and required verbatim disclaimer string.

Download CSV (28 States) ↓

Strategy 2 Research Design Blueprint

Full 4-phase methodological architecture for "Candidate Repost & Amplification" Harvesting: tracking how 2026 candidates launder influencer-made synthetic videos through retweets, quote-posts, and stitches.

View Markdown Blueprint →

Python Harvester Scripts (Zero-Key Pipeline)

Reproducible Python scripts querying YouTube's internal youtubei/v1/search & youtubei/v1/next JSON endpoints, youtube_transcript_api, and the Arctic Shift Reddit archive API.

2. Methodology: Bypassing Ad-Library Blind Spots & Paywalls

Existing commercial political ad trackers (such as the paywalled Wesleyan Media Project / Vivvix CMAG feed) suffer from a fundamental structural blind spot in 2026: they primarily capture formal television and digital ad buys where an official campaign or Super PAC voluntarily checked a platform compliance box.

Yet our empirical audit of the 2026 cycle reveals that the most aggressive synthetic political media operates through "Surrogate AI Laundering": partisan social media influencers, meme collectives (e.g., The Dilley Meme Team, @MrReaganUSA, Daily Soak), and boutique AI video studios (e.g., Menace Studio) produce organic generative AI attack videos, which candidates and party accounts then amplify via reposts—bypassing FEC "Paid for by" rules, Google/Meta Ad Libraries, and state statutory disclaimers by claiming the First Amendment satire/parody shield (17 U.S.C. § 107).

Why Simple Text Searches for State Disclaimers Miss 80% of Paid & Organic AI Videos

  1. Unlisted YouTube Ad Inventory: Over 90% of paid political pre-roll ads on YouTube are uploaded as Unlisted videos so they only serve to micro-targeted voters and remain invisible to public keyword searches.
  2. Visual Chyrons vs. Spoken Text: Across the 28 states with political AI disclosure laws (see Tab 4 below), video ads are only required to display a written on-screen chyron at the bottom of the video frame—not read it aloud in the transcript or paste it into the video description.
  3. Organic Influencer Laundering: Unpaid or dark-money-sponsored influencer posts on X, TikTok, Truth Social, and YouTube Shorts do not carry statutory campaign disclaimers at all.

The 4-Layer "Surrogate AI & Crowd-Detection" Pipeline

Layer 1

Candidate Amplification & Studio Snowballing

Anchors collection on a finite seed panel of 2026 U.S. Senate, House, and Gubernatorial candidates plus identified boutique AI studios (Menace Studio, Dilley Meme Team, Lone Star Liberty PAC), isolating short-form videos (≤240s) and excluding legacy broadcast news networks.

Layer 2

Raw JSON Platform Provenance Inspection

Queries YouTube's internal youtubei/v1/next endpoint to inspect the raw page JSON for machine-readable disclosure panels (howThisWasMadeSectionViewModel / "Altered or synthetic content"), catching 52.5% of influencer AI videos automatically.

Layer 3

Comment-Section "Crowd Detection" Score

Extracts top viewer comments via continuation tokens and computes the Crowd AI Flag Ratio (% of comments matching AI|deepfake|slop|fake voice|CGI|Sora|ElevenLabs)—exposing unlabeled campaign AI ads (such as Ken Paxton's anti-Talarico ad at 25.0% crowd callout).

Layer 4

Reddit Battleground Cross-Indexing

Queries the open Arctic Shift API across state battleground subreddits (r/texas, r/Georgia, r/Maine, r/wisconsin, r/Ohio, r/YAPms) to capture native v.redd.it / unlisted video uploads and multi-paragraph voter debates on epistemic trust.

3. Interactive Dataset Explorer

Browse and filter all four tables directly in your browser: