2 Nov 2026 · Bridgehead Research · 23 pages
Voter engagement and AI campaigning in Guernsey
Who is likely to vote in 2029, how voters are starting to use AI, and what a candidate or campaign team should do about both.
Key findings
- Fewer people voted, and nothing shows participation rising. 19,686 people voted in 2025, 20% fewer than in 2020 and the fewest since 2008. Turnout of the roll was 72.1%, down from a 79.8% peak in 2020 and level with 2016 (71.9%).
- What has risen is intensity. Politics took 10% of comments on the island’s three main news pages in 2024 and 36% in 2026, and Angry reactions reached a record 22.5% in early October 2026.
- AI use is growing fastest among older voters. At US rates, about 46% of Guernsey’s roll used a chatbot in 2026 and 71% to 78% will by mid-2029, with most of the growth among the over-50s.
- Voters already use AI on elections, and it makes mistakes. 7% of Scottish voters used it to help decide in 2026, and a third of chatbot answers in a Demos test contained factual errors.
- Margins are thin. The last seat in 2025 went at 5,458 votes, 21 ahead of the 39th, and about 12% of the roll voted in advance.
- With the Scorecard excluded, AI assistants named 11 different deputies as pledge-breakers across five runs. A single record that has been independently reviewed is fairer to candidates than that.
- AI helps campaigns most behind the scenes. The main risks are fakes and voter data uploaded to AI tools, and Guernsey has no rules yet on AI-made campaign content.