Attack Politics in Presidential Nomination Campaigns: An Examination of the Frequency and Determinants of Intermediated Negative Messages Against Opponents

Abstract

This article explores the negative campaign messages made by presidential nomination candidates on their opponents. Using a compilation of national and state media accounts of candidate attack activity from the 1992 Democratic nomination race, we seek to answer the questions --are the intermediated attacks made by presidential nomination candidates random events or are they predictable consequences of measurable variables ? Moreover, when candidates attack, who is their likely target? We find that intermediated candidate attacks can be predicted based on a number of conditions. Among these conditions are competitive positioning, reward factors and media-related conditions. Moreover, the general foci of attacks appear to be limited to attacking those who are competitively in the top tier. Attacks vary both in their frequency and in their nature depending on the competitive stage of the campaign. The systematic evaluation of these opponent-focused negative messages and their role in candidate strategy and voter evaluation is important for understanding presidential nomination politics and strategic communication in elections in general.

What (or Who) Makes Campaigns Negative?

“…A study of the 1992 Democratic nomination found that races that get more media attention are more likely to have negativity (Haynes and Rhine 1998), whereas primary campaigns from 1998 with more media attention were no more likely to be negative (Peterson and Djupe 2005). It is not clear how these studies of media attention in the primaries would apply to general elections.…”

Twitter Taunts and Tirades: Negative Campaigning in the Age of Trump

“…2 We attempt to examine all tweets in which one of the 17 Republican presidential hopefuls in 2016 mentions another candidate, investigating the degree to which candidates' relative standing and stage of the campaign predict propensity to attack one another on Twitter. We anticipate increasing negativity among all candidates as primaries and caucuses approach (Damore 2002 ;Haynes and Rhine 1998 ;Lau and Pomper 2001 ), either due to the narrowing of the fi eld (Haynes and Rhine 1998 ;Hale, Fox, and Farmer 1996 ;Lau and Pomper 2001 ;Druckman, Kifer, and Parkin 2010 ;Kahn and Kenney 2002) or because opportunities grow scarce as elections approach (Peterson and Djupe 2005 ;Haynes and Rhine 1998 ;Damore 2002 ). Alternatively, a fi eld of many plausible contenders may promote negative campaigning early on as candidates struggle to separate from the pack (Peterson and Djupe 2005 ;Djupe and Peterson 2002 ).…”

“…Furthermore, we expect candidates to launch attacks primarily "upward" at those with better prospects, having less incentive to attack those deemed less of a threat (Skaperdas and Grofman 1995 ;Thielmann and Wilhite 1998 ;Lau and Pomper 2001 ;Damore 2002 ;Druckman, Kifer, and Parkin 2010 ;Haynes and Rhine 1998 ). One open question is whether candidates will focus their attacks upon their leading competitor (Skaperdas and Grofman 1995 ) or go negative against multiple competitors.…”

“…Empirical work treating negative campaigning as a dependent variable has focused on press releases (Flowers, Haynes, and Crespin 2003 ;Haynes, Flowers, and Gurian 2002 ), campaign advertisements (Hale, Fox, and Farmer 1996 ;Kahn and Kenney 1999 ;Damore 2002 ), and news reports (Haynes and Rhine 1998 ;Djupe and Peterson 2002 ;Peterson and Djupe 2005 ). In the 2016 US presidential primary season, social media have emerged as an important weapon in the campaign messaging arsenal, with Twitter 1 taking center stage.…”

Negative campaigning in a probabilistic voting model

“…The studies in this literature most directly related to the current paper measure the determinants of negative campaigning. These papers include Damore (2002), Haynes and Rhine (1998), Kahn (1993), Lau and Pomper (2001), Proctor, Peterson and Djupe (2005), and Schenck-Hamlin and Haase (1994), among others. Relying on various types data on campaign negativism, the studies focus on potential causal factors such as the support difference between candidates, presence of an incumbent, party affiliation, gender, and proximity to the election date.…”