Lisbon, May 15, 2026 (Lusa) - Disinformation linked to Portugal's 2026 presidential elections accumulated over 12.8 million views on social media, with André Ventura, leader of the far-right populist Chega party, accounting for 88.5% of the cases, according LabCom, the Communication Laboratory at the University of Beira Interior (UBI) report.
The report “Disinformation in the 2026 Presidential Elections: candidates’ activity on social media”, developed in cooperation between the Portuguese Regulatory Authority for the Media (ERC) and LabCom, monitored disinformation related to the digital presence of pre-candidates and candidates on the most popular social media platforms in Portugal.
Data collection began on 17 November 2025, the day of the first televised face-to-face debate between André Ventura and António José Seguro (the election winner and now president of Portugal).
Disinformation reached a total of 12,826,973 views on social media, defined as the total number of times the content appeared to users, including repeat views, and generated 588,739 interactions, 105,712 comments, and 42,922 shares.
The report authors estimated that over nine million social media accounts might have been exposed to disinformation disseminated by pre-candidates and candidates during the election period.
Throughout the election campaign, 26 cases of disinformation were identified.
André Ventura, the candidate with the second-highest number of votes, was responsible for 88.5% (23) of the cases identified, Joana Amaral Dias, AND (National Democratic Alternative) candidate for two cases, and André Pestana, leader of S.T.O.P. (Union of All Education Professionals) for one case. Of these 26 cases, eight led to the ERC opening investigations.
Video emerged as the preferred format for spreading disinformation, having been used in 53.8% of cases, compared to photographs at 46.2%.
The majority of the identified cases present medium disinformation potential (92.4%), namely content associated with the decontextualisation of facts or the manipulation of data, making them more difficult for ordinary citizens to verify.
Posts with high disinformation potential account for a residual portion of the sample, with just one case (3.8%); these consisted of professionally produced content entirely detached from reality, frequently using advanced technological resources.
Publications with low disinformation potential also accounted for 3.8% of the total, consisting of amateurish content that any citizen could easily verify through a simple internet search.
In terms of the type of disinformation deployed, the figures break down as follows: discrediting the media (27%), followed by polls from companies not registered with the ERC (23.1%) and manipulated news content (15.4%).
Disinformation involving the imitation of reputable media outlets, misleading content, and false contexts achieved identical shares, each accounting for 7.7% of the cases.
Out of the 26 detected cases, seven (27%) involved the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), where political actors either deployed the technology directly or shared content generated with its assistance.
During the 2026 presidential elections, technology was primarily used to produce hyperrealistic images and videos of opponents, placing them in fabricated contexts, situations or actions, and to simulate voting trends using AI models.
The leader of Chega is the author of the post with the most views (2.3 million).
Posted on 26 January, it published voting intention data presented as the result of an online survey, with the image showing 63.16% for André Ventura and 36.84% for António José Seguro, attributing the data to the website Diário Bix.
However, this did not constitute an official poll, having been carried out by an unaccredited entity.
In total, LabCom analysed 8,047 messages, with activity centred mainly on Meta platforms, with Facebook (29.4%) and Instagram (28.6%) accounting for the majority of posts, followed by TikTok (16.3%), a platform that recorded significant growth compared to previous election cycles, X (14.9%), Threads (7.6%), YouTube (2.3%) and other platforms (1.1%).
António José Seguro was elected the president of Portugal with approximately 67% of the votes, while the Chega leader secured close to 33%.
PYR/MYAL // AYLS
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