The role of far-right party performance in shaping disinformation concerns of European voters: evidence from the 2024 European Parliament elections

Concerns about the risk of disinformation in the 2024 European Parliament elections were widespread in European capitals. Simultaneously, the far-right – often linked to the spread of disinformation – gained significant vote shares in these elections. This article therefore asks: To what extent and how does far-right election performance impact disinformation concerns of European voters in the aftermath of the elections? We posit that the election context moderates the extent to which motivated reasoning-related factors – i.e., election winning and not holding populist attitudes, explain variation in voters’ disinformation concerns and analyse survey data from the 2024 European Election Study conducted in all 27 EU countries to test this. Our results suggest that the electoral context may not only structure the magnitude of disinformation concerns directly, but the heightened presence of far-right parties in the electoral arena adds insecurity, in such way that winners and non-populist voters are no longer less concerned about disinformation. Thereby, our findings have important implications for disinformation research and European democracy.