Negative Political Advertising

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phBBnxXJdoM

This news clip from CBS discusses the beginning of the negative political ads for both candidates in the 2009 election. In the clip, the journalists claim that McCain started the negative campaigning when he released the "Celebrity" ad that criticized Obama's experience and how he campaigned. Because of this ad, Obama retaliated with the negative ad against McCain. Though the ads will get a lot of attention, the ads may backfire and make the candidates look like their ads are made to attack each other, rather than state their stances and issues. As stated in the news clip by Bob Schieffer, the ads are a stretch and may not work at all to persuade people not to vote for Obama. He also states in the clip that usually the candidate behind in the polls releases the attack ads first; which is a big deal as McCain's people are recognizing that they are behind. As we discussed in class, negative ads usually have negative effects and make the public more cynical towards candidates and politics in general. In a recent study, "The Effectiveness of Negative Political Advertisements: A Meta-analytic Review" by Richard Lau, Lee Sigelman, Caroline Heldman, & Paul Babbitt in the American Political Science Review, Volume 93, Number 4, December 1999, results from research found that Americans are getting more turned off by negative ads. The study showed that: 59% believe that all or most candidates deliberately twist the truth, 39% believe that all or most candidates deliberately lie to voters, 43% believe that most or all candidates deliberately make unfair attacks on their opponents but another 45% believe that some candidates do, 67% say they can trust the government in Washington only some of the time or never and lastly 87% are concerned about the level of personal attacks in today's political campaigns. However, in contrast to these statistics, the professionals who create the negative ads believe that they do in fact work. If done correctly without obvious attack strategy, the ads taint the view of the candidate being attacked. On the other hand, this study found that if the ad is obviously attacking the opposing candidate, that candidate's image is tainted for doing so. I chose this news clip because it discusses the attack ads of McCain, what it means to their campaign that they released them and because Obama's response is predicted as well. In summary, I think that the negative image ads are not very effective and may be difficult to create tactfully and subtly but the negative issue ads are the ones that have the potential ability to sway undecided voters.

Rachel Horensky
http://www.thisnation.com/question/031.html