Negative Attack Ads Decrease Voter

Negative Attack Ads Decrease Voter Turnout

Methodological Approaches in Action

Question for analysis: Do negative attack ads decrease voter turnout?

The greater the number of negative advertisements voters are exposed to, the lower the turnout.

Methodological Approaches in Action

Survey Research/Public Opinion Polls

When analyzing the impact of negative campaign influences upon voter turnout, the first instinct of any researcher might be to take random sampling of registered voters within different voting districts after an election and simply asking these voters what influenced them to go to the polls or to not go to the polls. The selection of voters would have to be randomized to ensure that self-identified Republicans and Democrats, and independent voters were all accounted for in the sampling. Demographically, a balance of gender, race, and religion, as well as household income, and other pertinent factors would need to be balanced, when selecting the respondents, to ensure that one group's point-of-view did not disproportionately affect the other group's point-of-view.

Ideally, voters from several different electoral areas would be compared across the nation, given that even a cross-sectional sampling of voters in different elections would be subject to other potential variables that could influence voter desire to go to the polls, like the weather, the level of the intensity 'get out the vote' drives in the area or during the election, and the effect of 'hot button' issues of decisive importance in the election. Also, elections with high voter turnout vs. elections with low voter turnout should be selected, to provide a comparative sampling.

However, there is also the problem of defining what constitutes 'negative advertising.' To some degree, this is perceptual. The interviewer could ask the voter whether he or she believed that certain campaign advertisements used by the different candidates were positive or negative. Thus, an interview with a polled voter could proceed as follows: the pollster could read a list of the different candidate's advertisements, ask whether the voters had seen them or not, ask the voters to rate them on a scale of negativity, and then assess the effect on turnout. A voter who perceived the majority of the ads he or she saw negative, and did not go to the polls would suggest that the negative campaigns decreased voter turnout. A voter who saw positive campaign advertisements, and perceived most of the ads to be positive, and voted in the election, would also support the thesis that negative advertising discourages going to the polls.

The other option of defining 'negative campaign advertising' would be for the researcher conducting the study to create a battery of potential negative characteristics, like attacking the opponent's voting record or character, and to rate the candidate's ads based upon such an inventory, and then tract the relationship between the voter's civic engagement and exposure to negative ads. A voter might insist that exposure to the media, positive or negative, had no effect on his or her decision-making when voting, but in fact be subliminally discouraged by the negative advertising from voting for anyone, thus this would track the effect of the voter's exposure to specific elements, regardless of whether the voter perceived the ads as negative. The argument for using this approach is that it allows the researcher to define what constitutes negative advertising, as ordinary voters might not perceive certain advertisements to be negative, even if they are quite subtly vitriolic. However, the general hypothesis seems more intent upon measuring voter dissatisfaction with the content of the advertising, rather than attempting to statistically demonstrate the subliminal effect of negative advertising upon the voter's confidence in the political process.

Chronicling exposure seems like a more effective approach to determining what influences a voter's turnout than asking the voter directly, as there may be a tendency for voters to seem 'above' the effects of the media, and the voter not wish to state that he or she was affected by advertising at all. Instead, merely asking what advertisements the voters were exposed to, and if these ads seemed to have negative content, allows for some subliminal influence upon voting behavior. If there is a strong positive correlation between low turnout and the perceptions of voters that they saw mainly negative campaign advertisements, even though the voters insist that negative campaign advertisements had little impact upon their behavior, this would support the hypothesis of the experiment.

Thus, the stages in the research process would proceed as thus. Given the current uproar over negativity regarding campaign advertising, at the expense of discussing 'real issues,' combined with decreasing voter turnout, the research hypothesis states there is a positive correlation between lower voter turnout and a great deal of negative advertising. The dependent variable would be the turnout and independent variables the quality and type of advertising. In terms of operationalization a or "working definitions" of negative advertising, asking voters to rate the different advertisements they saw, and their perception of the advertisements as negative or positive would be used rather than defining negative elements in ads according to a pre-determined scale. Control variables, regarding the possibility that Democrats or Republicans might come out in greater numbers, the effect of the weather, and the degree to which individuals felt passionately about the campaign would be controlled by examining different elections during the same year, or over the course of the same years, from different areas. Comparing different years would introduce too many additional variables, like the impact of current events and the different state of health of the economy.

Observation (Overt or Covert)

Another approach would be to do an anthropological case study of an election. The researcher could follow the election from the beginning to the end, and chronicle the candidate's use of different types of advertising, positive and negative. The reactions of voters to different types of advertising could be assessed, and the researchers could observe the election in the area, watch the ads, and do exit polls and interviews of voters. For example, the voter's initial general perceptions of the candidates' use of negative advertising or the other could be polled and recorded through questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups, with data kept regarding the different views of Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

The voters would be asked: Did negative advertising have a positive or negative effect upon their desire to vote? The types of negative advertising used could be noted over the course of the campaign, and categorized according to type -- for example, attacks on the opponent's record, experience, ethics, voting record, position, and commitment to the voting populace. The number of times these attacks were used, and by which candidate would then be recorded by the researchers.

Finally, after the election, the same voters would be contacted, to see if they had voted or not, and for whom. They would be asked if negative campaigning had had an effect upon their desire to vote, and their choice of candidate. The independent variable of this study would be the voter's desire to go to the polls. The dependent variable would be the level of negative campaigning that took place, as measured upon an established scale by the researchers. A low voter turnout and a high level of negative campaigning would suggest negative campaigns act as a deterrent to voters, while a high voter turnout with little negative campaigning would also support this thesis. If voters identified a strong desire to vote, which then diminished after a negative campaign, the hypothesis would be even more strongly supported, while voters with low levels of civic engagement who were motivated to vote by a more issue-oriented campaign would also support the hypothesis. A further breakdown could be done regarding which candidate deployed more negative campaigning, and if these resulted in a higher voter turnout in support of that candidate, or of the supporters of the candidate's opponent.