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Negative Advertising and Political Competition

Author

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  • Amit Gandhi
  • Daniela Iorio
  • Carly Urban

Abstract

Why is negative advertising such a prominent feature of competition in the political market? We propose an explanation that is based on the \fewness" of competitors in a political race. The typical election in the United States is a two-candidate race. In such duopoly contests, there is a simple economic rationale for "going negative" relative to non- duopoly contests: when the number of competitors is greater than two, engaging in negative ads creates positive externalities for opponents that are not the object of the attack. In contrast, positive ads benefit only the advertiser. To empirically investigate the hypothesis that the number of competitors can explain the volume of negative advertising in an election, we focus on US non-presidential primary contests in 2004, where the nature of primaries provides us with a cross section of independent races and large variation in the number of entrants. Our estimation employs novel data from the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which contains information on all political advertisements aired in the top 100 media markets in 2004 races. We find that duopolies are twice as likely to air a negative ad when compared to non-duopolies, and that doubling the number of competitors drives the rate of negative advertising in an election close to zero. These results are robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls and instruments for entrants in the race.

Suggested Citation

  • Amit Gandhi & Daniela Iorio & Carly Urban, 2010. "Negative Advertising and Political Competition," Working Papers 623, Barcelona School of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:623
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Andrea Galeotti & Andrea Mattozzi, 2011. ""Personal Influence": Social Context and Political Competition," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 307-327, February.
    2. Andrea Prat, 2002. "Campaign Advertising and Voter Welfare," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(4), pages 999-1017.
    3. Prat, Andrea & Puglisi, Riccardo & Snyder, James M., 2010. "Is Private Campaign Finance a Good Thing? Estimates of the Potential Informational Benefits," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 5(3), pages 291-318, December.
    4. Polborn, Mattias K. & David T., Yi, 2006. "Informative Positive and Negative Campaigning," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 1(4), pages 351-371, October.
    5. Snyder, James M, 1989. "Election Goals and the Allocation of Campaign Resources," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 637-660, May.
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    Cited by:

    1. Caterina Gennaioli, 2010. "Go Divisive or Not? How Political Campaigns Affect Turnout," CESifo Working Paper Series 3298, CESifo.
    2. Bekkouche, Yasmine & Cagé, Julia & Dewitte, Edgard, 2022. "The heterogeneous price of a vote: Evidence from multiparty systems, 1993–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    3. Enrico Guarini, 2016. "The day after: newly-elected politicians and the use of accounting information," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(7), pages 499-506, November.
    4. Nunnari, Salvatore & Galasso, Vincenzo & Nannicini, Tommaso, 2020. "Positive Spillovers from Negative Campaigning," CEPR Discussion Papers 14312, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Baharad, Roy & Cohen, Chen & Nitzan, Shmuel, 2022. "Litigation with adversarial efforts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    6. Bernhardt, Dan & Ghosh, Meenakshi, 2020. "Positive and negative campaigning in primary and general elections," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 98-104.
    7. Danilo P. Souza & Marcos Y. Nakaguma, 2017. "Determinants and Effects of Negative Advertising in Politics," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2017_25, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    8. Gorkem Bostanci & Pinar Yildirim & Kinshuk Jerath, 2023. "Negative Advertising and Competitive Positioning," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(4), pages 2361-2382, April.
    9. Danilo P. Souza & Marcos Y. Nakaguma, 2018. "Negative advertising and electoral rules: an empirical evaluation of the Brazilian case," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2018_10, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political Advertising; Primaries; Duopoly;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General

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