Going Negative

by Stephen Ansolabehere, Shanto Iyengar

Political advertising has been called the worst cancer in American society. Ads cost millions, and yet the entire campaign season is now filled with nasty and personal attacks. In this landmark six-year study, two of the nation's leading political scientists show exactly how cancerous the ad spot has become. 16 illustrations.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Chaz Contag · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exposure to a single advertisement solidifies the support of partisans, especially those who are poorly informed or wavering in their loyalty.
• Advertisements induce few Republicans to vote Democratic and few Democrats to vote Republican. Exposure to an opposition candidate's advertisements, in fact, can sometimes strengthen a voter's loyalty to his or her party.
• Candidates do best on those issues on which their party is generally perceived to be better. Republicans do better than Democrats when crime is the issue; Democrats do better than Republicans when unemployment is the issue.
• So-called "women's issues" reach Democrats more than they reach
women.
• Republican viewers find negative advertisements to be significantly more persuasive than positive messages. Democratic viewers find positive commercials to be more compelling.
• Independents are generally unresponsive to political advertising. with the important exception of negative commercials.

[Jordan · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the author's effort to use an experimental model instead of survey data to study the impact of campaign ads is commendable, the rest of the book is not. This should have been an article at best; I knew everything the authors were going to say after page 30. Even more problematic, their conclusions are also far too sweeping to be based only on exposure to one or two ads in the course of 15 minutes in Southern California.

[Gene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very proud to have worked on this book.