New Perspectives on Negative Campaigning

Why Attack Politics Matters

Edited by Alessandro Nai and Annemarie S. Walter

Contents

Abbreviations ix

List of Figures and Tables xiii

Contributors xix

Preface and Acknowledgements xxv

Chapter One – The War of Words: The Art of Negative Campaigning 1Alessandro Nai and Annemarie S. Walter

PART ONE: DEFINING AND MEASURING NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING

Chapter Two – Functional Theory: Negative Campaigning in Political Television Spots 35William Benoit

Chapter Three – What is Negative about Negative Advertisements? 47Barbara Allen and Daniel Stevens

Chapter Four – Comparing Measures of Campaign Negativity: Expert Judgements, Manifestos, Debates, and Advertisements 63François Gélineau and André Blais

Chapter Five – Attack, Support, and Coalitions in a Multiparty System: Understanding Negative Campaigning in a Country with a Coalition Government 75Wouter de Nooy and Jan Kleinnijenhuis

PART TWO: THE CAUSES OF NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING

Chapter Six – Explaining the Use of Attack Behaviour in the Electoral Battlefield: A Literature Overview 97Annemarie S. Walter and Alessandro Nai

Chapter Seven – Negative Campaigning in Proportional Representation (Yet Non-Coalition) Systems: Evidence from Switzerland 115Damien Bol and Marian Bohl

Chapter Eight – Do Female Candidates Feel Compelled to Meet Sex-Role Expectations or Are They as Tough as Men? A Content Analysis on the Gender-Specific Use of Attacks in German Televised Debates 129Jürgen Maier

viii New Perspectives on Negative Campaigning

Chapter Nine – Going Negative in Direct-Democratic Campaigns 147Laurent Bernhard

Chapter Ten – When Do Parties Attack their Competitors? Negative Campaigning in Austria, 2002–08 165Martin Dolezal, Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik and Wolfgang C. Müller

Chapter Eleven – The Strategy of Electoral Spots in Brazilian Presidential Campaign: The Decision on When and Where to Broadcast an Attack 183Felipe Borba

Chapter Twelve – Understanding Negativity Within and Among Different Levels of Governments: Evidence from Turkey 201Emre Toros

Chapter Thirteen – An OCEAN of Negativity: An Experimental Assessment on Personality Traits and the Chances to ‘Go Dirty’ in Debates on Political Issues 217Alessandro Nai, Valentina Holecz, Mario Marchesini, Adrien Petitpas and Ben Sanogo-Willers

PART THREE: THE EFFECTS OF NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING

Chapter Fourteen – How Negative Campaigning Impinges on the Political Game: A Literature Overview 235Alessandro Nai and Annemarie S. Walter

Chapter Fifteen – The Effects of Advertising Tone on Information Processing and Vote Choice 249Richard R. Lau and David P. Redlawsk

Chapter Sixteen – How the News Media Amplify Negative Messages 267Travis N. Ridout and Annemarie S. Walter

Chapter Seventeen – When Do Attacks Work? Moderated Effects on Voters’ Candidate Evaluation in a Televised Debate 287Wouter de Nooy and Jürgen Maier

Chapter Eighteen – Feeding the Negative? Referendum Votes in Ireland 307Theresa Reidy and Jane Suiter

Chapter Nineteen – Where to Go From Here in the Study of Negative Campaigning: The Comparative Challenge Ahead 327Annemarie S. Walter and Alessandro Nai

Bibliography 335

Index 385

List of Figures and Tables

Figures

Figure 1.1: Number of articles referring to negative campaigning by 100 articles on politics 3

Figure 1.2: Number of articles referring to negative campaigning in its title by 100 articles on politics 3

Figure 3.1: The tone of advertisements in the US in 2008 according to five different methods of coding negativity 54

Figure 4.1: The Quebec political landscape 70

Figure 4.2: Positive/negative campaign by party 71

Figure 5.1: Four configurations of balance 79

Figure 5.2: Marginal effects of balance over time 90

Figure 7.1: Evolution of negativity during campaigns 123

Figure 8.1: Use of attacks by male and female candidates in German televised debates, 1997–2013 136

Figure 8.2: Interruption of the political opponent by male and female candidates in German televised debates, 1997–2013 137

Figure 8.3: Gender as a moderator for the use of attacks 140

Figure 8.4: Gender as a moderator for the use of issue-based attacks 141

Figure 10.1: Number of attacks per day over the course of three campaigns 177

Figure 11.1: Evolution of negative advertisements in the first round (2006 and 2010) 197

Figure 11.2: Evolution of negative advertisements in the second round (2006 and 2010) 198

xiv New Perspectives on Negative Campaigning

Figure 12.1: The tone of the election campaigns in Turkey, general and local elections 1983–2011 (newspaper articles) 210

Figure 12.2: Level of negative campaigning in Turkish general and local elections 1983–2011 (newspaper articles) 212

Figure 12.3: Levels of issues and traits in electoral messages (both positive and negative appeals), Turkish general and local elections 1983–2011 (newspaper articles) 214

Figure 12.4: Levels of issues and traits in negative electoral messages, Turkish general and local elections 1983–2011 (newspaper articles) 215

Figure 13.1: Experimental protocol 224

Figure 15.1: Net affect for in-party candidate, by party and opponent’s campaign strategy 256

Figure 15.2: Defection of party voters by campaign strategy 257

Figure 15.3: Effect of campaign strategy on memory for advertisements 259

Figure 15.4: Effect of in-party campaign strategy on comparability of search across candidates 260

Figure 15.5: Effect of campaign strategy on advertisement-specific discretionary search 262

Figure 15.6: Effect of campaign strategy on correct voting 265

Figure 17.1: Statement strategy by speaker 293

Figure 17.2: RTR dial changes by partisan group during candidate statements 296

Figure 17.3: Predicted probabilities for speaker-strategy-party identification combinations 303

Figure 18.1: OI referendum – ‘yes’ support in opinion polls 312

Figure 18.2: Fiscal Treaty – change in support levels in opinions polls 313

Figure 18.3: ‘Yes’ arguments recalled by voters after the OI campaign 316

List of Figures and Tables xv

Figure 18.4: No arguments recalled by voters after the OI campaign 317

Figure 18.5: Arguments for voting ‘yes’ cited by voters during the Fiscal Treaty campaign 319

Figure 18.6: Arguments for voting ‘no’ cited by voters during the Fiscal Treaty campaign 319

Tables

Table 1.1: Studies referring to negative campaigning beyond the US case by country 5

Table 1.2: Examples of definitions of negative campaigning 11

Table 1.3: Overview functions of political communication for selected countries and elections 18

Table 1.4: Examples of causes of negative campaigning 22

Table 1.5: Examples of effects of negative campaigning 24

Table 2.1: Functions and topics of political campaign messages 40

Table 2.2: Functions of political television spots 42

Table 2.3: Topics of political television spots 43

Table 2.4: Topics of attack in political television spots 43

Table 2.5: Functions of political television spots by incumbency 44

Table 2.6: Functions of past deeds in political television spots by incumbency 44

Table 2.7: Functions of general goals in political television spots 45

Table 2.8: Functions of ideals in political television spots 45

Table 3.1: Correlations between five different methods of measuring negativity 56

xvi New Perspectives on Negative Campaigning

Table 3.2: Estimated relationships between negativity and turnout according to five different methods 58

Table 3.3: Estimated relationships between negativity and turnout controlling for the number of advertisements aired 60

Table 4.1: Result of the 2012 Quebec general election 70

Table 4.2: Target of attacks (expert survey in per cent) 72

Table 4.3: Campaign tone in video advertisements (per cent negative quasi-sentences) 73

Table 4.4: Ranking of parties’ campaigns (from most positive to most negative) 74

Table 4.5: Target of attacks (video advertisements in per cent) 74

Table 5.1: Predicting support over attack, unstandardised results (MCMC estimation, 100,000 runs) 87

Table 6.1: Overview studies examining level of negative campaigning across elections 112

Table 7.1: Results of the 2011 cantonal and federal elections in Zurich and Lucerne 120

Table 7.2: Negativity by campaign 122

Table 7.3: Negativity by party 124

Table 7.4: Parties targeted by negativity 126

Table 8.1: Gender as a moderator for the use of negative messages 139

Table 8.2: The impact of gender on the use of negative messages 142

Table 9.1: Classification of messages 149

Table 9.2: Overview of the selected campaigns 153

Table 9.3: Standing in the race according to polling results by campaign 156

Table 9.4: Difference in campaign tone between supporters and opponents by campaign and message type 158

List of Figures and Tables xvii

Table 9.5: Ordered probit regression models explaining the use of negative campaigning 160

Table 10.1: Press releases: Total numbers coded and shares of attack releases 174

Table 10.2: Explaining targeting strategies (2002–08) 175

Table 10.3: Explaining daily attack behaviour 179

Table 11.1: List of analysed candidates 192

Table 11.2: Function of spots in per cent 193

Table 11.3: Target of attacks by position in the polls in per cent 194

Table 11.4: Objective of spots by audience blocks in per cent – 2006 195

Table 11.5: Objective of spots by audience blocks in per cent – 2010 196

Table 12.1: Variable characteristics 207

Table 12.2: Code frequencies and percentages according to newspapers and election years: general elections and local elections, 1983–2011 209

Table 13.1: The five traits of personality in our data 226

Table 13.2: The five traits of personality and negative discourse during debates 227

Table 13.3: OLS regression analysis 228

Table 13.4: The five traits of personality and negative discourse during debates; comparison for ‘treatment 1’ (emotional video) 230

Table 13.5: The five traits of personality and negative discourse during debates; comparison for ‘treatment 2’ (decisional finality of discussion) 230

Table 15.1: Effect of campaign advertisement manipulations on correct voting 264

Table 16.1: Number of unique advertisements aired by country by election campaign 273

Table 16.2: Readership numbers and type of newspaper studied 276

xviii New Perspectives on Negative Campaigning

Table 16.3: Number of articles mentioning advertising by source per year 277

Table 16.4: Per cent of articles referencing advertisement negativity by country 278

Table 16.5: Specific advertisement mentions and tone by country 280

Table 16.6: Tone of advertisements mentioned and tone of advertisements aired 282

Table 16.7: Predictors of number of media mentions of an advertisement 283

Table 17.1: Predicting responses in favour of Steinmeier or Merkel 298

Table 18.1: Campaign summaries 315

Table 18.2: Campaign messages at the OI referendum 318

Table 18.3: Campaign messages at the Fiscal Treaty referendum 320

Table 18.4: Reasons given for vote in OI referendum by age 320

Table 18.5: Reasons given for vote in OI referendum by class 321

Table 18.6: Reasons given for vote in OI referendum by gender 321

Table 18.7: Reasons given for vote in OI referendum by knowledge 322

Table 18.8: Logistic regression: Arguments recalled by voters from the OI referendum campaign 322

Table 18.9: Reasons given for vote choice at Fiscal Treaty referendum by age 323

Table 18.10: Reasons given for vote choice at Fiscal Treaty referendum by class 324

Table 18.11: Reasons given for vote choice at Fiscal Treaty referendum by gender 324

Table 18.12: Reasons given for vote choice at Fiscal Treaty referendum by understanding 325

Table 18.13: Logistic regression: Reasons given for vote choice at Fiscal Treaty referendum 325