Attack Ad - Other Effects of Attack Ads

Other Effects of Attack Ads

As research suggests, attack ads in political campaigns are mainly effective because they contribute to citizen education and engagement, and only rarely have negative impacts. Voters often look to negative information to find reasons for supporting one candidate over another. However, there have been times when attack ads become too controversial in society and backfire against a candidate . For example, in 2006 Republican challenger Paul R. Nelson took his race against five-term U.S. Rep. Ron Kind (D-La Crosse) using one of the most controversial attack ads of the decade. His ad spun that, “Ron Kind has no trouble spending your money, he’d just rather spend it on sex,” and, “instead of spending money on cancer research, Ron Kind voted to spend your money to study the sex lives of Vietnamese prostitutes.” Nelson’s challenge fell short, as Ron Kind was reelected, while the attack’s outrageous presentation provoked an uproar from Republicans and Democrats. According to Fridkin and Kenny, the negative coefficient for mudslinging suggest that challengers lose almost 3 points on the feeling thermometer when a candidate engages in mudslinging. The study also shows that the influence of negativity is less powerful for challengers than for incumbents. Nelson's ads, which also categorized him as a "hockey dad" two years before Sarah Palin infamously used hockey mom when running for Vice President, made Nelson a celebrity of sorts on The Opie and Anthony Show, and even conducted an interview on the show before the election.

In the United States, researchers have consistently found that negative advertising has positive effects. According to Finkel and Greer (1998), negative advertising “is likely to stimulate voters by increasing the degree to which they care about the election’s outcome or by increasing ties to their party’s nominee.” This is an important feature of negative campaign advertising because it can solidify a candidate's support going into an election. The finding was repeated by Ken Goldstein and Paul Freedman (2002), who found that negative campaign ads raise interest in the election as well as raise the perceived importance of the election, which increases voter turnout. Negative advertising, then, can be very beneficial to a candidate during a campaign to not only win votes but also get out the vote.

Negative advertising can also be used to demobilize voters. Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar (1995) found that negative campaign advertising appeals only to partisans. They go on to say that negative advertising actually alienates independents and demobilizes them as voters, which causes elections to be fought among the partisan extremes. This makes sense since it removes the independents as a voting bloc to be concerned about and allows the candidates to stick to the party line.