‘Going negative’ in politics doesn’t always work

Opinion

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This article was published 16/12/2022 (739 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Listening to the radio recently while drinking my morning coffee, I heard an advertisement from the Progressive Conservative Party attacking the NDP and its leader Wab Kinew by reminding listeners of the broken promises of the former government led by Greg Selinger.

Selinger, the ad mentioned, had endorsed Kinew to be his replacement as party leader. The ad reminded me of the persistent campaign by the NDP to portray Premier Heather Stefanson as a clone of Brian Pallister, another unpopular premier.

With less than a year to go before the next provincial election, the frequency and intensity of negative messaging on all communications platforms is likely to increase, because political parties and their professional campaign managers believe such ads work to damage opponents and to mobilize supporters.

The question of what constitutes negative campaigning has been much debated. An early influential book on the concept described it as any attack on a political opponent. This definition was found to be too general; subsequent studies went beyond a simple dichotomy between negative and positive messaging, and described a range of communications approaches: attack ads targeted at persons, including aspects of their private lives; the use of rumours and pejorative language; and the dishonest misrepresentation of policy positions.

The use of compare-and-contrast messaging about policy differences among parties and messages advocating for certain policy positions are sometimes mistakenly described as negative. Depending on their content and tone, they can actually help to engage and inform voters.

The question of why parties resort to negative messaging has led to numerous explanations, both broad and specific. Increasingly, such messaging is meant to capitalize on fear by emphasizing the risks of voting for a party or its leader. Based on advice from communications specialists, parties calculate the benefits of “going negative” will outweigh a potential backlash from voters, who often profess a dislike for attack ads.

Interestingly, studies reveal attack ads are more memorable and provoke more discussion than ads simply comparing parties or advocating for certain policies. There is also research indicating direct exposure to negative ads has less impact on voters than media commentaries discussing such ads.

The emergence of the “permanent campaign,” a phrase used by political scientists to describe the relentless efforts by all parties to gain votes (even outside of official campaign periods), has encouraged the negativity trend. Competitive parties struggle daily to win an ever-shortening news cycle by scoring political points against their opponents and or boosting their reputations with the public.

Because negativity and conflict fit with what the mainstream media considers to be “newsworthy,” strident criticism of opponents is a sure way to gain coverage. The rise of social media, including blogs, Facebook and Twitter, has contributed to polarization and negativity in the communications environment.

It has allowed non-party institutions and individuals to escalate the rhetoric and underscore the perceived risks of voting for parties and individuals.

Research indicates the decision to go negative is affected by a number of contextual factors. The closeness of an election contest may cause a party to launch a negative campaign; not surprisingly, opposition parties are more likely than governing parties to initiate such attacks. This can lead to counterattacks, with each side blaming the other for lowering the tone of elections.

In multi-party systems, when the main parties exchange attacks, the “disgust response” among voters may benefit other parties. The ideological distance among the parties can be a factor prompting negativity. Populist leaders and their parties are more likely to use emotional rhetoric and character attacks as part of their appeal.

Many studies have sought to determine the impacts of negative messaging on democracy and voting; only a few findings can be highlighted here. One interesting revelation is that people are more disgusted by incivility and personal attacks than by negativity on other matters.

There is mixed evidence on whether negativity is corrosive to democracy, contributing to citizen cynicism about politics and reducing voter turnout. Broader forces obviously contribute to the existing serious malaise within contemporary democracies, so identifying the separate impacts of negative partisanship can be tricky.

Parties accept the conventional wisdom that negative campaigning is an effective strategy for maximizing votes. In fact, this assumption is not strongly supported by most of the available empirical evidence. Attack ads have been found to damage the reputations of the targeted parties and candidates, but there is also evidence of a backlash effect which involves voter evaluations of the attacking party suffering even more than those of the target.

Variations in the content and intensity of ads matter. Voters react more critically to personal attacks, as opposed to ads which focus on substantive policy differences.

Negativity in Manitoba politics comes nowhere close to what happens in the U.S. In the run-up to and during the next Manitoba election, the provincial parties will undoubtedly make use of negative messaging. They must be careful, however, not to cross a blurred line by offending the public’s sense that not everything is fair in political warfare.

Paul G. Thomas is professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba.