ABSTRACT

Modern campaigns in the Citizens United era are awash with negativity, much of which originates from independent political groups (e.g., Super PACs, 501c organizations, etc.). In contrast to the plethora of work showing candidate endorsed attacks to be ineffective, more recent experimental evidence suggests that candidates may benefit from these independently sourced attack ads. However, the findings derived from this experimental research on independent attacks suffer from three critical shortcomings. The present paper identifies and addresses these shortcomings by assessing the net result of candidate endorsed and independently sponsored negativity using real presidential campaign data. The following develops a theory on the effects of source in negative campaigning for the highest office of the land, and tests whether it conforms to political behavior exhibited during the 2016 presidential campaign at both the state and county level. Results show the source of an attack matters, even in presidential contests, a finding particularly relevant given the hundreds of millions of dollars of attack ads from outside sources which saturate the televised airwaves of presidential campaigns today and well into the foreseeable future.

摘要

公民联合会中的现代运动时代充满消极情绪，其中很大一部分来自独立的政治团体（例如，超级PAC，501c组织等）。与大量的工作表明候选人认可的攻击是无效的相反，最新的实验证据表明候选人可能会从这些独立来源的攻击广告中受益。但是，从这项关于独立攻击的实验研究得出的发现存在三个严重缺陷。本白皮书通过使用真实的总统竞选数据评估候选人认可和独立赞助的消极情绪的最终结果，找出并解决了这些缺点。以下内容发展了一种理论，说明了源头在土地最高职位上的负面竞选活动中的影响，并测试它是否符合2016年总统竞选在州和县一级所表现出的政治行为。结果显示，即使在总统大选中，攻击的源头也很重要，鉴于外部来源的数亿美元的攻击广告使当今乃至可预见的总统大选的电视广播饱和，这一发现尤其重要。