A sad state of affairs!
HS
U.S. parties spend 10 times more on negative election ads
Last Updated: Wednesday, November 1, 2006 | 2:13 PM ET
CBC News
As American voters face a final week of campaigning before the mid-term elections, a study suggests political parties spend nearly 10 times more on negative ads than positive ones.
From a Republican ad suggesting that Harold Ford Jr., a black Senate candidate from Tennessee, is fond of having sex with white women to Democratic attacks on Republicans for corruption and mismanagement of the Iraq war, there are far more negative ads on television than more traditional commercials that extol candidates’ virtues.
The figures, complied by the Associated Press, also show a contrast from the last election in 2004, when the Republican and Democrat parties spent slightly more money on positive commercials.
U.S. election law places strict limits on what candidates can spend on their campaigns and advertising but allows political parties more leeway and higher spending ceilings.
Both parties take advantage of this, but the Republicans are more likely to attack an opposing candidate than the Democrats, the AP figures suggest.
Groups that aren’t directly affiliated to the political parties — such as Moveon.org, which favours the Democrats, and the pro-Republican Economic Freedom Fund — also spend money on campaign advertising that is almost invariably negative.
‘Good cop, bad cop’
Candidates themselves tend to run the positive ads, according to Evan Tracey of TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group, a company that tracks political advertising.
“It’s good cop, bad cop,” Tracey said. “The parties can throw the sharp elbows and give the candidates plausible deniability.”
‘The parties can throw the sharp elbows and give the candidates plausible deniability.’-Analyst Evan Tracey on negative ads
Negative advertising is credited with deciding many recent elections in the United States.
In 1988, ads featuring a black parolee from Massachusetts called Willie Horton helped bolster voter distrust for Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, who lost to George H. W. Bush.
His son’s victory in the 2004 vote is said to be due in part to ads that raised allegations about the Vietnam War record of his opponent, John Kerry, in the campaign by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group.
Although the public is thought to be opposed to the general idea of negative advertising, campaign strategists say the ads appear to work because negative opinions linger with voters longer than positive ones.
“But it only works in the narrow sense,” said Ray Seidelman, a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
“In the long run, what it does is create a tremendous amount of distrust in the process
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