Effectiveness
According to Lipsitz, Trost, Grossmann, & Sides, many voters claim to dislike negative campaigning on principle and want candidates to present policy proposals in a civilized manner. The voting public see attack ads as an element of smear campaigning. However, the continued use of these types of ads indicates that political operatives have found them to be useful. According to Lau and Rovner social psychologists feel that negative information has a tendency “to be more influential than equally extreme or equally likely positive information.” Citizens may want to hear the good qualities of the candidates but they tend to remember more about the less desirable ones when presented with them. Research indicates that voters are open to candidates attacking each other as long as it’s on issues that they deem to be “appropriate.” For example, survey of Virginia Voters, 80.7% of voters feel it is fair for a candidate to criticize an opponent for “talking one way and voting another” but only 7.7% feel it is fair for a candidate to attack an opponent for the “behavior of his/her family members.”
The effectiveness of attack ads has been debated by political pundits for years. Many political analysts are of the opinion that attack ads have the potential to sway voters. Professor Scott Hawkins “suggests that even a mention in the media that a candidate or party is planning to run negative advertisements can be beneficial, since it plants seeds of doubt in the voter's mind, especially early in the campaign when voters tend to be less involved. If the reported claims turn up in advertisements later in the campaign, they already seem familiar to the voter” (Note: As of 11/4/2012, this link is not working)
Attack ads can not only mobilize a candidates’ support base but also appeal to those who may not necessarily be politically active but happened to be watching television when the ad came on and were struck by the claims it made without knowing if they were true or not. The mere implication of a candidate’s name with a scandal can have long lasting and significant effects.
Some believe that attack ads are useful in shaping public opinion. This may be the result of the appeal to emotion which attack ads often represent. However, an attack ad may fail in its intended purpose and backfire against the group which used it. If an ad is seen as going too far or being too personal the voters may turn against the party that put out the ad. One example of an attack ad backfiring was during the 1993 federal election in Canada when the Progressive Conservative Party attacked Liberal Party leader Jean Chrétien by appearing to many to implicitly mock his Bell's Palsy partial facial paralysis. Outrage followed, and the PC Party was hurt badly in the polls. Similar backlash happened to the Liberal Party of Canada in the 2006 federal election for creating an attack ad that suggested that Conservative leader Stephen Harper would use armed Canadian soldiers to police major cities. The ad was never aired. Its effect was to diminish the believability of the Party's other attack ads. A leaked copy that was broadcast on the news offended many Canadians particularly the military, some of who were fighting in Afghanistan at the time. (See also 2006 Harper attack ads.)
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