Negative Campaigning

This is a page for students of PS 240. On November 14th and 17th we discussed negative campaigning. On the 10th of November we watched See How They Run, a documentary about the 1998 mayoral race in San Francisco.

Possible Exam Questions

1. 1 According to Brooks and Geer, Beyond Negativity: The effects of incivility on the electorate, When does negative campaigning undermine the political process?

1. 2 What factors influence a negative campaign, and what are the possible effects?

1. 3 What is the defining trait of a negative campaign ad?

Readings

T. Brader (2005). Striking a Responsive Chord: How Political Ads Motivate and Persuade Voters by Appealing to Emotions. American Journal of Political Science, 49, 388-405.

Brader believes that psychological research can provide a framework for describing the effect of emotional appeals by advertising on voters. He believes that linking images and music with emotions can dramatically affect the responses people have to an ad. Fear constitutes a large part of how people feel about an ad, especially if the ad offers a viable alternative to the thing the may fear. There are two appeals, fear and enthusiasm. Fear challenges people to reevaluate their beliefs while enthusiasm encourages peoples pre conceived ideas on a candidate. The both hypotheses are borne out. Enthusiasm encourages participation in the campaign, and reinforces preconceived notion while fear causes people to seek more information about the candidates.

Theory of Affective Intelligence: There are two emotional systems, and there is a tendency to steer between a reliance on habits and an effortful thought process.

D.J. Brooks (2006). The Resilient Voter: Moving Toward Closure in the Debate over Negative Campaigning and Turnout. Journal of Politics, 68, 684-696.

Brooks argues that voters are resilient. When confronted with negative campaigning, they are not less likely to vote. She believes that Ansolabehere and Iyengar's work proving that negative campaigning depresses voter turn out was flawed. She believes that negative campaigning is far more likely to be remembered by voters than positive campaigning, and as such, be more useful. By modifying their study, she finds that negative campaigning does not decrease turn out, nor does it appear to increase it. Instead negative campaigning is simply just another facet of the campaign.

P.S. Martin (2004). Inside the Black Box of Negative Campaign Effects: Three Reasons Why Negative Campaigns Mobilize. Political Psychology, 25, 545-562.

Martin writes that negative campaigns increase turnout for three reasons: republican duty, candidate threat, and perceived closeness of the election.

Citizens think that they're less likely to vote because of negative campaigning, but in fact the opposite is true.

Summary:

J.D. King and McConnell, J.B. (2003). The Effect of Negative Campaign Advertising on Vote Choice: The Mediating Influence of Gender. Social Science Quarterly (Blackwell Publishing Limited), 84, 843-857.

King and McConnell believe that negative advertising may have a boomerang effect in the long term. They believe that prolonged negative campaigning by a candidate may begin to show negative effects, especially among women. Subjects were shown three ads interspersed among a television show, after the third ad, women were more turned off than men by the negative ads. This resulted in a kind of arc style opinion graph, or their boomerang. Though, as discussed in class, this is likely because of the subject matter of the third ad, a pregnant woman, than just the fact it was negative. This suggests that viewers may care about the actual content of negative advertising rather than just wether it is negative or not.

D.J. Brooks and Geer, J.G. (2007). Beyond Negativity: The Effects of Incivility on the Electorate. American Journal of Political Science, 51, 1-16.

This article states that negative campaigining has moved past the questioning of their own oppositions qualifications for candidacy and into harsh personal attacks. In essence moving from civil attacks to incivility. The article goes on to state that not many studies have focused on the tone of the negativity of articles. Many focus on positive/negative, but none really talk about personal attacks versus positive, or uncivil negative vs. civil positive. The study concluded that voters are more not very effected by civil negative messages but more by the uncivil negative messages. These uncivil negative messages make viewers less likely to value the campaign ad, but not less likely to partake in the democratic process.

D.F. Damore (2002). Candidate Strategy and the Decision to Go Negative. Political Research Quarterly, 55, 669.

Summary: This article studied why candidates decide to launch a negative campaign, if they do. Working on the assumptions that candidates make rational decisions regarding their primary goal of winning office, Damore studied tv ads and found that four of the five factors he examined correlated with candidates' decision to go negative. These factors were a candidate's position in the polls, the proximity to election day, party ownership, and issue saliency. Candidates are more likely to attack if they are behind in the polls, the election is soon, when they and their party owns the issue that they're attacking on, and the issue is of interest to the voters. They're also more likely to attack if they've been attacked before. However, Damore did not find that a history of attacking dissuades candidates from continuing to attack, despite the possibility of higher costs associated with frequent attacks. Also, candidates may attack on their opponent's 'owned' issue or on an issue that neither owns with equal preference, particularly if an issue that they do not own is salient to the public.

L.L. Kaid (2008). In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 11, 339-341.

Summary:

T.N. Ridout and Franz, M. (2008). Evaluating Measures of Campaign Tone. Political Communication, 25, 158-179.

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