Recent controversy over campaign advertising has focused on the effects of negative ads on voters. Proponents of the demobilization hypothesis have argued that negative ads turn off voters and shrink the size of the electorate. We argue that negative campaign charges are just as likely to engage potential voters, leading to a stimulation effect when it comes to turnout. Drawing on a new source of ad-tracking data from the 1996 presidential election, combined with the 1996 National Election Study, we generate estimates of the probability that voters were exposed to positive and negative political advertising. With this new, more precise approach, we find unambiguous evidence that exposure to negative campaign ads actually stimulates voter turnout.Why do so few Americans vote? What is the impact of campaign advertising? At the intersection of these two important and enduring questions, a heated debate has arisen and a new question has emerged: does negative advertising depress voter turnout? Although some have argued persistently that negative ads have a demobilizing effect, others have found evidence that negativity may serve to stimulate turnout. Clearly, much is at stake, for these questions go to the heart of contemporary concerns about the health of American democracy. They also speak to long-standing questions about how candidate discourse and campaign messages may affect voters. Still, despite a multiplicity of data and an impressive range of methodological approaches, important questions remain.tions and, therefore, be a healthy sign . . . Or, contradictions may stem from incomplete models, inaccurate measurements, overgeneralizations from case studies, or inappropriate research designs" (Baumgartner and Leech 1996, 522). It is our contention that the contradictory findings in the literature on negative advertising are due more to the second set of factors than the first. In particular, many of the conclusions on both sides of the demobilization debate rest on inadequate data and misspecified models.We are partial to the stimulation hypothesis and are impressed by the number of studies identified by Lau et al. (1999) showing that negative ads do not demobilize and may in fact mobilize voters. The findings we present here are certainly consistent with this emerging conventional wisdom, but our research design represents a significant advance over past efforts to measure the effects of advertising at the national level. It is critical for scholars to bring to bear on their research questions the best available evidence; therefore, our objective here is also to argue on behalf of a relatively new source of data and a new approach to the challenge of measuring media exposure. Providing firmer empirical evidence for where we actually are in this debate may make it possible for students of advertising and turnout to move in new directions, beyond blunt questions of tone. In our conclusion, we identify some of these new directions.We begin with a brief summary of the arguments in the debate, including a more speci...
Concern about the state of American democracy is a staple of political science and popular commentary. Critics warn that levels of citizen participation and political knowledge are disturbingly low and that seemingly ubiquitous political advertising is contributing to the problem. We argue that political advertising is rife with both informational and emotional content and actually contributes to a more informed, more engaged, and more participatory citizenry. With detailed advertising data from the 2000 election, we show that exposure to campaign advertising produces citizens who are more interested in the election, have more to say about the candidates, are more familiar with who is running, and ultimately are more likely to vote. Importantly, these effects are concentrated among those citizens who need it most: those with the lowest pre-existing levels of political information.
Concern about the state of American democracy is a staple of political science and popular commentary. Critics warn that levels of citizen participation and political knowledge are disturbingly low and that seemingly ubiquitous political advertising is contributing to the problem. We argue that political advertising is rife with both informational and emotional content and actually contributes to a more informed, more engaged, and more participatory citizenry. With detailed advertising data from the 2000 election, we show that exposure to campaign advertising produces citizens who are more interested in the election, have more to say about the candidates, are more familiar with who is running, and ultimately are more likely to vote. Importantly, these effects are concentrated among those citizens who need it most: those with the lowest pre-existing levels of political information.C entral to most notions of representative democracy is the simple idea that citizens ought to participate in the process of choosing leaders and expressing opinions on matters of policy. Engaged, attentive, and informed citizens, it is widely held, should be able to select representatives and make other meaningful political choices consistent with their preferences and interests. Key to this exercise of informed democratic decision making is the assumption that there will be sufficient, relevant data available in the political environment and that citizens will be able and inclined to draw on this information in making their choices.Democratic reality, of course, falls far short of this ideal, and the project of saving democracy from the shortcomings of the American citizen has been an ongoing challenge for political science. How is it that a disengaged, ill-equipped, and poorly informed citizenry has managed to maintain a democracy? Specifically, how can people with little interest in and even less knowledge about politics arrive at more or less reasoned political judgments? While a number of alternative solutions have been proposed, we suggest that over the last several decades the informational needs of the American citizen have been subsidized by an important but overlooked source: the thirty-second television campaign advertisement.Although much maligned by scholars and popular commentators alike, television campaign advertising actually fulfills a vital democratic function. To be sure, it is easy to identify particular ads that are silly, offensive, uninformative, or even misleading and to argue that such ads have a detrimental effect on democratic citizenship. Nevertheless, political advertising has the potential to bring about a more attentive, more informed, and more participatory citizenry. We show that exposure to campaign advertising can produce citizens who are more interested in a given election, have more to say about the candidates, are more familiar with who is running, and are ultimately more likely to vote. And importantly, these effects tend to be concentrated among those citizens who have the greatest need: those wh...
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