Assessing Accountability in a Post-Citizens United Era

Abstract

Greatly increased advertising spending by independent groups represents one of the most dramatic recent changes in U.S. elections. This article moves forward our theoretical and empirical understanding of how the public responds to ads sponsored by candidates as compared to ads sponsored by unknown Super PACs and similar independent groups. In the theoretical section of the article, we establish why it is necessary to measure both backlash and ad persuasiveness to understand overall ad effectiveness and then we develop a series of hypotheses about the likely influence of ad sponsorship. In the empirical section, we undertake the first analysis to date of how the public responds to attack television ads sponsored by unknown independent groups. Using a large-N, geographically representative sample of U.S. adults, we conduct an experiment to assess how sponsorship influences ad effectiveness. We find that attack ads sponsored by unknown independent groups are more effective, on net, than ads sponsored by candidates.

Citizens United: A Theoretical Evaluation

“…However, there exists an equilibrium in which i only incurs outside spending to endorse the safe policy when θ i =l (i.e., a i ( h , p 1 , p 2 )=∅ and a i ( l , p 1 , p 2 )=0 ∀ p 1 ≠ p 2 ). This seems in line with recent evidence on outside spending being substantially issue based and aimed at reducing voter support for a given candidate (Dalton and McIlwain 2011; Brooks and Murov 2012).…”

Citizens United: A Theoretical Evaluation

“…However, there exists an equilibrium in which i only incurs outside spending to endorse the safe policy when θ i = l (that is a i (h, p 1 , p 2 ) = ∅ and a i (l, p 1 , p 2 ) = 0 ∀p 1 = p 2 ). This seems in line with recent evidence on outside spending being substantially issue-based and aimed at reducing voter support for a given candidate (Dalton and McIlwain, 2011;Brooks and Murov, 2012).…”

Positive Spillovers from Negative Campaigning

“…Our article provides a (causal) measure of this spillover effect and of the backlash effect in a controlled environment. In a sense, we also contribute to a recent literature that studies the increasing trend of negative advertising by independent groups in the United States (Brooks and Murov 2012 ; Dowling and Wichowsky 2015 ). Since the “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission” U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2010, which abolished restrictions on campaign advertising by outside groups, negative ads run by independent groups have been shown to produce less backlash effects.…”