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PolitickerWA Partners
April 10, 2008 - 6:42am
News
Going Negative Works
By Wally EdgePundits bemoan the negative campaign advertisements, the mudslinging and the dirt. Voters claim to be turned off, disgusted or apathetic. People say they want a clean campaign.
What they don’t tell you is that negative ads work. Negative ads work exponentially better than positive ads, biographical ads, third-party validation ads, or any other type of ads. Swift-boating has succeeded, to the point where it is its own verb.
Because of the unmatched effectiveness of negative ads, campaigns will continue to produce them, until they no longer work – and negative ads will continue to work, so long as they are allowed on the air.
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Negative Ads
Sometimes negative ads do not work, sometimes they backfire (the boomerang effect, it's called).
They are more memorable, but they often energize both sides. And they often backfire when two candidates are in the same political party. A recent study looked at all the research for negative campaign ads and found, mostly, that they didn't do a particularly good job of persuading people, but they did do a pretty good job of informing them about the campaign.
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