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Negative campaigning is the process of deliberately spreading negative information about someone or something to damage theirpublic image. A colloquial and more derogatory term for the practice ismudslinging.
Deliberate spreading of such information may be motivated either by a genuine desire to warn others against real dangers or deficiencies, or by the campaigner's dishonest attempt to win in political, business or other spheres of competition against an honest rival. However, if the mudslinging statements can be proved to be correct, mudslinging takes the moral dimension of an opponent's duty serving the greater good by exposing the weakness of the other candidate.
The public image of an entity can be defined asreputation, esteem,respect, acceptance of the entity's appearance,values and behaviour by the general public of a given territory and/or asocial group, possibly within time limits. As target groups of public and their values differ, so negativity or positivity of a public image is relative; thus, to be successful, negative campaigning has to take into account current values of the group it addresses. The degree of strictness in practicing the group's values as opposed to its tolerance for violating the norms has also to be taken into consideration.
There are a number of techniques used in negative campaigning. The most standard form of negative campaigning iscampaign advertising that serves as an attack on an opponent's personality, record, or opinion. There are two main types of ads used in negative campaigning: attack and contrast.
Attack ads focus exclusively on the negative aspects of the opponent. There is no positive content in an attack ad, whether it is about the candidate or the opponent. Attack ads usually identify the risks associated with the opponent, oftenexploiting people's fears to manipulate. Because attack ads have no positive content, they have the potential to be more influential than contrast ads in shaping voters’ views of the sponsoring candidate's opponent.[1] One of the most famous attack ads wasDaisy Girl by the campaign ofLyndon B. Johnson that successfully portrayed RepublicanBarry Goldwater as threateningnuclear war. Common attack ad themes include painting an opponent as soft on criminals, dishonest, corrupt, or a danger to the nation. Another relatively common theme is attacking the other side for running a negative campaign.
Unlike attack ads, contrast ads contain information about both the candidate and the opponent. The information about the candidate is positive, while the information about the opponent is negative. Contrast ads compare and contrast the candidate with the opponent, juxtaposing the positive information about the candidate with the negative information of the opponent. Because contrast ads must contain positive information, contrast ads are seen as less damaging to the political process than attack ads.[1]
Push polls are attacks disguised astelephone polls. They might ask a question like "How would you react if Candidate A was revealed to beat his wife?", giving the impression that Candidate A might beat his wife. Members of the media and of the opposing party are deliberately not called making these tactics all but invisible and unprovable.
Dirty tricks are also common in negative political campaigns. These generally involve secretly leaking damaging information to the media. This isolates a candidate from backlash and also does not cost any money. The material must be substantive enough to attract media interest, however, and if the truth is discovered it could severely damage a campaign. Other dirty tricks include trying to feed an opponent's team false information hoping they will use it and embarrass themselves.
Often a campaign will use outside organizations, such aslobby groups, to launch attacks. These can be claimed to be coming from a neutral source and if the allegations turn out not to be true the attacking candidate will not be damaged if the links cannot be proven. Negative campaigning can be conducted by proxy. For instance, highly partisan ads were placed in the2004 U.S. presidential election by allegedly independent bodies likeMoveOn.org andSwift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Sponsors of overtly negative campaigns often cite reasons to supportmass communication of negative ideas. TheOffice of National Drug Control Policy uses negative campaigns to alert the public about serious health risks. Similar negative campaigns have been used to rebut mass marketing bytobacco companies or to discouragedrunk driving. In politics, proponents of negative campaigning argue that voters have a right to know the truth about a candidate even if the information is unfavorable. In other words, if an opponent is crooked or unethical, then the public should be informed of the same.
Martin Wattenberg andCraig Brians, of theUniversity of California, Irvine, considered in their study whether negative campaigning mobilizes or alienates voters. They concluded that data used byStephen Ansolabehere in a 1994 American Political Science Review article to advance the hypothesis that negative campaigning demobilizes voters was flawed.
A subsequent study done by Ansolabehere andShanto Iyengar in 1995[2] corrected some of the previous study's flaws. This study concluded that negative advertising suppressed voter turnout, particularly for Independent voters. They speculated that campaigns tend to go negative only if the Independent vote is leaning toward the opponent. In doing so, they insure that the swing voters stay home, leaving the election up to base voters. They also found that negative ads have a greater impact on Democrats than on Republicans. According to them, base Republicans will vote no matter what (and will vote only for a Republican), but Democrats can be influenced to either stay home and not vote at all or to switch sides and vote for a Republican. This, combined with the effect negativity has on Independents, led them to conclude that Republicans benefit more from going negative than Democrats.
Other researchers have found different, more positive outcomes from negative campaigns.Rick Farmer, PhD, an assistant professor of political science at theUniversity of Akron found that negative ads are more memorable than positive ads when they reinforce a preexisting belief and are relevant to the central issues of a marketing campaign. Researchers at theUniversity of Georgia found the impact of negative ads increases over time, while positive ads used to counteract negative ads lack the power of negative ads.[3] Research also suggests negative campaigning introduces controversy and raises public awareness through additional news coverage.[4]
Kyle Mattes andDavid P. Redlawsk inThe Positive Case for Negative Campaigning show through surveys and experiments that negative campaigning may provide informational benefits for voters. Without negativity, voters would not have full information about all of their choices, since no candidate will say anything bad about herself. They argue that candidates have to point out the flaws in their opponents for voters to be fully informed.
Most recent research distinguishes between a dichotomous (positive versus negative) and graded conceptualization of negative campaigning. The latter accounts for differences in the strength of negative communication.[5] It argues that positive (i.e. information about parties and candidates) and derogatory (i.e. democratic disaffection) effects of negative campaigning will depend on the strength or intensity of negative campaigning. Similarly, political candidates and parties have been found to adapt the strength of their negative messages during election campaigns in order to preserve the chances for post-electoral collaboration in countries with frequent coalition governments.[6]
Some strategists say that an effect of negative campaigning is that while it motivates the base of support it can alienate centrist and undecided voters from the political process, reducingvoter turnout and radicalizing politics.[2] In a study done by Gina Garramone about how negative advertising affects the political process, it was found that a consequence of negative campaigning is greater image discrimination of the candidates and greater attitude polarization. While positive ads also contributed to the image discrimination and attitude polarization, Garramone found that negative campaigning played a more influential role in the discrimination and polarization than positive campaigning.[7]
Negative ads can produce serious backlash. Adisastrous ad was run by theProgressive Conservative Party of Canada in the1993 Canadian federal election, apparently emphasizingLiberal Party of Canada leaderJean Chrétien's partial facial paralysis, which was caused byBell's palsy, in a number of unflattering photos, with the subtext of criticizing his platforms. Chrétien took maximum advantage of the opportunity to gain the public's sympathy as a man who struggled with a physical disability and his party's subsequent overwhelming victory in the election helped reduce the governing Progressive Conservatives to two seats, along with losing official party status.
A similar backlash happened to the Liberal Party in the2006 federal election for running anattack ad that suggested thatConservative leaderStephen Harper would use Canadian soldiers to patrol Canadian cities, and impose some kind of martial law. The ad was only available from the Liberal Party's web site for a few hours prior to the release of the attack ads on television; nevertheless, it was picked up by the media and widely criticized for its absurdity, in particular the sentence "we're not making this up; we're not allowed to make this stuff up". Liberal MP Keith Martin expressed his disapproval of "whoever the idiot who approved that ad was," shortly before Liberal leader Paul Martin (no relation) stated that he had personally approved them. The effect of the ads was to diminish the credibility of the party's other attack ads. It offended many Canadians, particularly those in the military, some of whom were fighting inAfghanistan at the time. (See2006 Canadian federal election)
In the 2008 US Senate race inNorth Carolina, Republican incumbentElizabeth Dole attempted an attack ad on Democratic challengerKay Hagan, who had taken a small lead in polls, by tying her toatheists. Dole's campaign released an ad questioning Hagan's religion and it included a voice saying "There is no God!" over a picture of Kay Hagan's face. The voice was not Hagan's but it is believed the ad implied that it was. Initially, it was thought the ad would work as religion has historically been a very important issue to voters in the American south, but the ad produced a backlash across the state and Hagan responded forcefully with an ad saying that she was a Sunday school teacher and was a religious person. Hagan also claimed Dole was trying to change the subject from the economy (the ad appeared during theGreat Recession). Hagan's lead in polls doubled and she won the race by a nine-point margin.
Because of the possible harm that can come from being seen as a negative campaigner, candidates often pledge to refrain from negative attacks. This pledge is usually abandoned when an opponent is perceived to be "going negative," with the first retaliatory attack being, ironically, an accusation that the opponent is a negative campaigner.
While some research has found advantages and other has found disadvantages, some studies find no difference between negative and positive approaches.[8]
Research published in the Journal of Advertising found that negative political advertising makes the body want to turn away physically, but the mind remembers negative messages. The findings are based on research conducted by James Angelini, professor of communication at theUniversity of Delaware, in collaboration with Samuel Bradley, assistant professor of advertising atTexas Tech University, and Sungkyoung Lee ofIndiana University, which used ads that aired during the 2000 presidential election. During the study, the researchers placed electrodes under the eyes of willing participants and showed them a series of 30-second ads from both theGeorge W. Bush andAl Gore campaigns. The electrodes picked up on the "startle response," the automatic eye movement typically seen in response to snakes, spiders and other threats. Compared to positive or neutral messages, negative advertising prompted greater reflex reactions and a desire to move away.[9]
Studies have shown a variety of different negativity's predictors. Some of the negativity's drivers stated are: The attacker's personality traits (Big Five,Dark Triad,Populism),[10] the media environment,[11][5] and election-related factors[12][13][14][10] (competitiveness, a candidate's rank in polls, type of election, party system).
InUnited States politics, negative campaigning has been called[who?] "asAmerican as Mississippi mud" and "as American as apple pie".[15] Some research suggests negative campaigning is the norm in all political venues, mitigated only by the dynamics of a particular contest.[16]Lee Atwater, best known for being an advisor to presidentsRonald Reagan andGeorge H. W. Bush, also pioneered many negative campaign techniques seen in political campaigns today.[17]
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