Reexamining the Effects of Electoral Competition on Negative Advertising

2021 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2110420
Author(s):  
Kevin K. Banda
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Negative Advertising ◽  
Open Seat ◽  
Campaign Advertising

Prior research suggests that campaigns become more negative when the election environment becomes more competitive. Much of this research suffers from data and design limitations. I replicate and extend prior analyses using a much larger number of cases. Using advertising data drawn from 374 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial campaigns contested from 2000 through 2018, I find evidence that electoral competition encourages candidates to engage in more negative advertising campaigns and that incumbency status conditions these effects. Incumbents of both parties use more negative messaging strategies as competition increases. The effects of competition among challengers and open seat candidates is mixed. These results add to what we know about campaign advertising behavior and suggest that researchers should take care to avoid ignoring important contextual factors that underlie candidates’ strategic choices.

scholarly journals Negative Campaign Advertising: Demobilizer or Mobilizer?

1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 891-899 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin P. Wattenberg ◽  
Craig Leonard Brians
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Real World ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Experimental Setting ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Negative Advertising ◽  
Campaign Advertising

As political campaigns become increasingly adversarial, scholars are giving some much-needed attention to the effect of negative advertising on turnout. In a widely recognized Review article and subsequent book, Ansolabehere and his colleagues (1994, 1995) contend that attack advertising drives potential voters away from the polls. We dispute the generalizability of this claim outside the experimental setting. Using NES survey data as well as aggregate sources, we subject their research to rigorous real-world testing. The survey data directly contradict their findings, yielding no evidence of a turnout disadvantage for those who recollected negative presidential campaign advertising. In attempting to replicate Ansolabehere et al.'s earlier aggregate results we uncover quite substantial discrepancies and inconsistencies in their data set. We conclude that their aggregate study is deeply flawed and that Ansolabehere et al. exaggerated the demobilization dangers posed by attack advertising, at least in voters' own context.

Scale Matters: Addressing the Limited Robustness of Findings on Negative Advertising

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-541
Author(s):  
ELIYAHU V. SAPIR ◽  
JONATHAN SULLIVAN ◽  
TIM VEEN
Keyword(s):  
Negative Advertising ◽  
Negative Campaigning ◽  
Explanatory Variables ◽  
Campaign Ads ◽  
Alternative Measures ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
Negative Messages ◽  
Campaign Advertising

AbstractNegative campaign advertising is a major component of the electoral landscape, and has received much attention in the literature. In many studies, political scientists have tried to explain why some campaign ads contain more negative messages than others and to identify the determinants of this form of campaign behavior. In recent years, a number of studies have acknowledged the differences between alternative measures of negativity, but, in most cases, it is assumed that since these measures are highly correlated, they are unidimensional and essentially interchangeable. In this article, we argue that much of the debate in the literature over negative campaigning is a result of inadequate operationalizations of negativity. Although debates over negativity have often been framed in conceptual terms, there is a methodological explanation for why they persist We begin our analysis by constructing reliable scales of negativity, and model them with salient predictors reported in the literature as significantly associated with campaign attacks. Our findings show that scaling does matter, and while some of the explanatory variables are robust predictors of negativity, most of them are not.

scholarly journals Victory through defence: Employers’ policy preferences and success in the industrial democracy reform process in Finland, 1960s–1970s

2021 ◽  
pp. 0143831X2110322
Author(s):  
Maiju Wuokko ◽  
Susanna Fellman ◽  
Ilkka Kärrylä
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Industrial Democracy ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
The 1960S

This article analyses the Finnish employers’ policy preferences, strategies and success in the industrial democracy (ID) reform process of the 1960s–1970s. The article establishes the employers’ hierarchy of preferences, evaluates how successful they were in realising their objectives, and discusses the strategic choices and contextual factors behind their successes and losses. The article engages with scholarly discussions about interest groups’ policy preferences and success and emphasises the multifaceted nature and the temporal dimension of success. A sufficiently long timeframe is often necessary in order to assess the eventual winners and losers of a policy process, as well as the degrees of success attained by actors.

Campaign Advertising and Democracy in Taiwan

2008 ◽  
Vol 196 ◽  
pp. 900-911 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Presidential Campaigns ◽  
Empirical Estimates ◽  
Campaign Advertising

AbstractThis article sets out a framework for conceptualizing and researching an increasingly important element of electoral competition in Taiwan. Analysing the tone and content of television and newspaper advertising across three presidential campaigns, it provides empirical estimates that challenge some common stereotypes about advertising in Taiwan.

Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies since 1945

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark N. Franklin ◽  
Cees van der Eijk ◽  
Diana Evans ◽  
Michael Fotos ◽  
Wolfgang Hirczy de Mino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Established Democracies
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