Negative political advertising – does it work?
I like Easter (well the chocolate actually), Christmas and Father’s Day – some things that come around on a regular basis are great. But other recurring decimals are less so. Think the post-Christmas Visa bills, the in laws’ annual visit, and the forty-something health check (and all that that entails). The bad pennies, so to speak.
And then there are local and national elections. With their protracted foreplay, petty politics, uninspiring policies and people, and the relentless and formulaic party advertising. Just another bad penny in the public purse.
In the forthcoming New Zealand elections however, the tension between the Maori and Mana parties – not to mention Harawira and Act’s willingness to say exactly what they think – things look like they’re going to be a little more “interesting” than normal. And negative advertising’s almost certainly going to play a part in the election and in shaping voter perceptions and opinions. For better or worse.
The question is does negative political advertising actually work? Research by authors Phillips, Urbany and Reynolds published in the highly respected Journal of Consumer Research delivered voters some very bad news:
Negative advertising is more likely to change votes than positive ads.
And yet there’s no shortage of research and anecdotal evidence that voters dislike negative political advertising. Similarly, other research suggests negative adverts reflect poorly on their sponsors and may reduce the rate of voter turnout (although there are other studies that show voter turnout may increase and that negative ads benefit society overall).
But regardless of our own personal like or dislike, negative advertising is generally accepted as being more noticeable and memorable than positive information. Remember National’s “Beaches – Iwi. Kiwi.” billboards? Remember Labour’s billboards from the same campaign? You see what I mean.
In previous research of voter response to negative ads, there was no definitive proof of any systematic effectiveness or ineffectiveness. Various authors have suggested such mixed results reflect the interaction of advertising valence and prior political preferences simply reinforcing an existing dislike of the candidate under attack (ie a confirmation tendency – negative ad effects may be limited to a “preaching to the choir” effect).
In the Phillips et al study young, university-educated registered voters’ reaction and decision making responses to negative and positive ads used in the 2004 USA presidential election (Bush vs Kerry) were recorded. As conventional wisdom would suggest, negative and positive ads created very different reactions amongst voters that were independent of prior preferences, suggesting a general disdain for negative advertising, “Even for a candidate’s supporters, a negative or anti-opponent ad was more likely to be counter-argued and deemed less persuasive and influential than was a positive version”, said the authors. So, no surprise there.
Negative advertising prompted more migration of vote intention.
But the effect of negative advertising is not quite that simple. As the authors also noted, “Overall, negative advertising seemed to prompt more migration of vote intention, surprisingly both counter to and in the direction of the ad”. The experiment design allowed the researchers to separate the effects of reinforcement, backlash, defensive reactance and position change, to give some insight as to how voters integrate negative advertising with their prior candidate preferences.
Negative advertising by candidates has two possible downsides: it may create a backlash amongst current supporters who dislike negative advertising to the point they may change their opinion of the candidate who approved it; or it may lead voters in the opposing camp to shore up their defenses and strengthen their position, thereby making them even more resistant to subsequent messages.
The strengthening (or attitude polarization) effect is a theoretically expected response, but has always been difficult to measure because few studies have dealt with issues contentious enough to create such partisan motivations. The defensive reaction by an opposing camp is the more common response identified, however, it is usually of limited importance given it’s a strengthening of opinion amongst voters unlikely to vote for the opposing candidate anyway. It’s only if the negative advertising generates anger within the opposition camp to the point that it increases the opposition’s turnout at the polls that the cost would be more significant.
The backlash effect, however, certainly does have the potential to be a very significant cost as it may adversely impact otherwise established votes.
But what of the upside for a candidate? Despite being clearly disliked, negative ads have been shown to have a significant advantage over positive ads in reinforcing and increasing the commitment of voters who support the attacking candidate.
Negative ads also had a position change effect (ie may cause people to change their vote) for some who initially opposed the candidate, causing the authors to comment, “This is perhaps the most interesting result of the study as the size of this effect is essentially the same as the reinforcement effect”. The authors were unable to show any significant position change resulting from positive advertising.
While they pull back from concluding that negative advertising always works relative to positive advertising, they do observe there appears “to be legitimate routes to persuasion for negative advertising, enlightened by considering voters’ prior preferences and an understanding of the campaigns’ objectives”.
So what does that mean for Kiwi voters contemplating the run up to the next election? Well, the writing’s on the wall. Negative advertising will produce more attention and information processing, even among those voters who appear to have already made their decision.
In the opportunistic world of MMP it would seem an almost certain bet that one party or another will see negative advertising for what it is. A way to get noticed – with a very good likelihood that as long as the party does not do anything that would create a backlash amongst its existing supporters, the upside’s better than any downside, in the short-term at least.
Putting personal preference aside, that’s a good steer for both Act and the Mana party in 2011 I suspect.
Social science research shows that negative advertising turns off non-party affiliated voters. In the U.S., this is how the right-wing manages to win elections. They don’t want people to go to the polls, unless they are right-wingers. Negative advertising works for the minority party, if that minority party can get out the votes of its own members.
Companies rarely run negative ads against competitors but political candidates often do. They flood the airwaves with negative ads especially in closely fought states like Pennsylvania and Indiana where the margin of victory was as important as who wins..Political brands on the other hand are works in progress and consistency is not always their strong suit..Negative ads ask us to vote against someone rather than for someone.