Negative Advertising and Political Competition

Abstract

Why is negative advertising such a prominent feature of competition in the US political market? We hypothesize that two-candidate races provide stronger incentives for going negative relative to non-duopoly contests: when the number of competitors is greater than two, airing negative ads creates positive externalities for opponents that are not the object of the attack. To investigate the empirical relevance of the fewness of competitors in explaining the volume of negative advertising, we exploit variation in the number of entrants running for US non-presidential primaries from 2000 through 2008. Duopolies are over twice as likely to air a negative ad when compared to non-duopolies, and the tendency for negative advertising decreases in the number of competitors. The estimates are robust to various specification checks and the inclusion of potential confounding factors at the race, candidate, and advertisement levels. * We thank

Positive Spillovers from Negative Campaigning

“…However, in a race with multiple candidates, a negative effect on the target of the attack, coupled with a backlash effect on the attacker, may give raise to a positive externality for the other candidates, who refrained from going negative. This free-riding problem should reduce the incentives to go negative in multiple candidates races (Gandhi et al, 2015).…”

“…Konrad (2000) provides a theoretical framework to show how effort for negative activities (sabotage), as opposed to positive ones (self-promotion), is decreasing in the number of contenders. Empirical evidence in Gandhi et al (2015) shows that, in U.S. non-presidential primary contests, electoral races with more challengers are characterized by less airing of negative ads than two-candidate races. Our paper provides a measure of this spillover effect and of the backlash effect in a controlled environment.…”

Positive and negative campaigning in primary and general elections

“…Sabotage against one group creates a positive externality for other groups, so more lobbying groups make sabotage less attractive. Gandhi et al (2016) provide supporting evidence of this. Soubeyran (2009) models two-agent contests with two types of effort-attack and defense.…”

Positive Spillovers from Negative Campaigning

“…We call this effect on the idle candidate(s) a positive externality (for the idle candidates) from negative campaigning. This effect should reduce the incentives for any candidate to go negative in races with multiple candidates (Gandhi et al, 2015). Clearly, this effect is more likely to emerge in multiparty systems (Elmelund-Praestekaer, 2008;Hansen and Pedersen, 2008).…”

“…However, as in the US politics, trailing behind in the polls and fierce competition lead to more negativity (Elmelund-Praestekaer, 2008). Empirical evidence in Gandhi et al (2015) shows that, in US nonpresidential primary contests, electoral races with more challengers are characterized by less airing of negative ads than two-candidate races. Our paper provides a (causal) measure of this spillover effect and of the backlash effect in a controlled environment.…”