Negative Political Advertising: Overview

Introduction

During political campaigns, candidates and their supporters frequently employ advertising campaigns that highlight the unfavorable aspects of their opponents. This practice of negative advertising is intended to undercut the public’s perception of the opponent and redirect voters toward the candidate behind the campaign. Negative advertising may take the opponent to task for their voting history and political affiliations, or it may be personal in nature, publicizing information about the opponent’s relationships and activities. These advertisements are often designed to frighten or anger by using images and language meant to evoke an emotional response.

Negative advertising is a common political practice in local, state, and federal elections, yet its use generates debate. Some believe that it is sometimes necessary, however unsavory, for a campaign to present an advertisement that is designed to criticize an opponent and even frighten voters. Others believe that negative advertising is unnecessary and often inaccurate, or at least factually incomplete. As negative advertising continues to be used, especially in heavily contested campaigns, it is likely that the debate will continue as well.

Understanding the Discussion

Ideology: A personal system of beliefs and principles, frequently applied in political and religious contexts.

McCain-Feingold Act: A 2002 US federal law that places restrictions on financing political campaigns; also called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

Media: The collective systems by which information is transmitted to the public, including the internet, television, radio, and print.

Mudslinging: A slang term for negative political advertising.

Platform: The set of issues and proposals on which a political candidate’s campaign is based.

History

Negative political advertising has existed in the United States in one form or another for as long as there have been political campaigns. During the first presidential election in 1796, Thomas Jefferson was labeled an atheist and a Francophile (the public had grown wary of France, which at the time was mired in the French Revolution; Jefferson had previously been the US ambassador to that country). Some of Jefferson’s political opponents published statements claiming that if elected, he would ban the Bible and allow the nation to fall into a state of moral decay. On the other side of the campaign, John Adams was labeled by Jefferson’s proponents as a monarchist with aspirations to become king of the new United States. Adams won the election, and Jefferson came in second; in accordance with the Electoral College procedure at the time, Jefferson thus became Adams’s vice president, forcing the two rivals to work together after the election.

The practice of mudslinging (a slang term for negative campaign advertising) has continued throughout US history. During the nineteenth century, one of the most effective vehicles for such advertisements was a song. One such musical number suggested that the reelection of incumbent John Quincy Adams over challenger Andrew Jackson in the 1828 election would foster gun violence and famine. The 1860 election saw songs mocking Abraham Lincoln’s physical appearance and criticizing his political ideology. (Lincoln once quipped that if he believed the songs and published comments about his candidacy, he would have quickly ended his presidency.) In the 1888 presidential election, negative advertisers wrote a song on behalf of Benjamin Harrison, extolling his military service and claiming that his opponent, Grover Cleveland, "skulked behind the nearest substitute."

Negative campaigning has taken many different forms in many different media throughout history. In the early days of the United States, newspapers were run by political parties and were filled with negative advertisements about candidates from competing parties. Outside of print, the aforementioned campaign songs, which featured simple lyrics and tunes for easy memorization, appealed to less educated but nonetheless interested voters. By the middle of the twentieth century, however, these vehicles for negative advertising were joined by two extremely powerful forms of media: radio and television. Previously, negative political advertisements had been targeted at voters who took an active interest in the electoral process by reading politically biased newspapers or attending candidate rallies; now, with the arrival of radio and television, campaigns and other interested parties were able to purchase airtime during popular shows and present their advertisements to wider and less specialized audiences. The general public, even those who were not registered voters, were now exposed to this campaign practice. Later, the birth of the internet only expanded its reach.

Throughout the history of its use in the United States, negative campaign advertising has served two purposes. It can be used to solidify and energize voters who were already likely to support a particular candidate, and it can also be used as a vehicle to push undecided voters to one candidate’s camp by revealing potentially questionable aspects of the opposing candidate’s behavior. One high-profile example of this latter tactic occurred during the 2004 presidential campaign, when a group of Vietnam War veterans attempted to discredit Democratic candidate senator John Kerry by attacking his wartime service, causing many among the general public to question Kerry’s military service record and whether the medals he received were in fact warranted. This generated a backlash against Kerry from many independent voters as well as Democratic supporters.

The use of negative political advertisements during major campaigns has been particularly linked to political action committees, or PACs, which use existing campaign laws to fund the purchase of airtime without having to identify their members or contributors. Many such organizations are issue oriented, while others are partially connected to organized labor associations, such as trade and labor unions. In 2002, Congress passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, which included provisions that required non-campaign organizations to identify themselves and the amounts of money contributed during federal campaigns. In addition, the act banned any corporation-funded advertisement that included the name of a candidate for federal election from airing within thirty days of a primary election or sixty days of a general election. In 2007, however, the US Supreme Court restructured the act’s language, creating an exemption for advertisements that did not explicitly encourage individuals to vote for or against specific candidates.

In 2010, the Supreme Court further modified the McCain-Feingold Act via the controversial Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which struck down the act’s limits on corporation-funded advertising entirely by a 5–4 vote, although it upheld the disclosure requirement for expenditures by special-interest groups. The court’s majority opinion held that the First Amendment rights of these groups and corporations would be curtailed if the law remained in place. Negative campaign advertising thus continued to proliferate, since it is largely funded by such groups. The dissenting opinion criticized the decision on several fronts, including its application of free-speech protection to legal entities rather than individuals and its disregard for previous First Amendment case decisions that justified limiting corporate spending in order to safeguard elections from corruption.

Negative political advertising continued at all levels of government throughout the 2010s, and its use remained under debate. During the 2012 Republican primary race, for example, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich launched a series of attack advertisements against former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, claiming that he had no choice but to do so after Romney ran a series of negative advertisements against him. By the spring of 2012, as it became clear that Romney would become the Republican nominee, President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign issued its own negative advertisements, targeting Romney’s role as an executive with the financial services company Bain Capital. Following the 2012 election, the Wesleyan Media Project reported that three-quarters of campaign ads in the 2012 presidential campaign had appealed to anger, setting a record for campaign negativity.

However, in September 2016, the Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) reported that the 2016 campaign appeared on track to break records for negativity. Its final analysis found that about half of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's televised campaign ads were negative, while pro-Clinton ads by the Democratic Party and outside groups were nearly all negative. By comparison, fewer than 30 percent of then Republican nominee Donald Trump's own ads were negative, with more than half being contrast, and party- and group-sponsored pro-Trump ads skewed roughly 60 percent negative and 30 percent contrast. Strikingly, of all pro-Clinton ads, 60 percent focused on personality rather than policy differences, whereas about 70 percent of pro-Trump ads were policy-oriented. Although Senate ads were also more negative than in prior years, the WMP noted that the level of negativity in congressional campaigns were comparable to past cycles. It also noted that the volume of televised ads was far lower in 2015–16 than in prior presidential election cycles and slightly down in congressional races, perhaps suggesting greater reliance on news media coverage and web-based advertising strategies. In analyzing potential factors in Clinton's loss, it also cited research indicating that negativity in political advertising can backfire on the sponsor.

Negative Political Advertising Today

Commentators and the WMP also watched closely and analyzed the period of campaigning between incumbent president Trump and Democrat Joe Biden that led up to the 2020 presidential election. Overall, the WMP reported that the total percentage of negative ads in the presidential race had decreased, with 34 percent classified as negative as opposed to 52 percent in 2016. Meanwhile, the percentage of positive ads produced had increased to 27 percent and the percentage of negative Senate adds had declined to an extent. Still, negative ads played a part, in some cases even earlier than in previous contests, as both candidates' teams spent large amounts of money in this area, including on television ads as well as those ads appearing on social media sites such as Facebook. Commentators noted that, from the beginning of campaigning, Trump tended to put out ads that were more negative and aggressive than Biden. In addition to ads that attacked Biden personally through focus on his advanced age and appearance, Trump ads attacking Biden used negative tactics such as misrepresentation of Biden's positions on policies like police defunding. Amid the damages the COVID-19 pandemic had inflicted on Trump's reelection campaign in the form of widespread criticism of his administration's reaction to the public health crisis, as well as polls indicating that Biden was leading in many areas, Trump continued to prioritize negative advertising about Biden. Meanwhile, in addition to Biden's campaign team releasing some negative ads, many independent groups put out negative ads against Trump.

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