Negative personalization and voting behavior in 14 parliamentary democracies, 1961–2018

Garzia, Diego; Silva, Frederico Ferreira da

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2021.102300

Cited by 25 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…While we showed that individual candidates' decision to go negative is driven, among other things, by their personalities, it would be interesting to investigate whether they personalize their targets by focusing their attacks on competing candidates rather than on other parties (and how this varies depending on the personality of the attacker and the target). Such behavior could well contribute to the recent trend toward "negative personalization" in voting behavior, where voters' party choice is increasingly shaped by their negative feelings about political candidates (e.g., Garzia & da Silva 2021). These limitations notwithstanding, our article makes an important contribution.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Hardwired to attack. Candidates’ personality traits and negative campaigning in three European countries

2022

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A growing body of studies shows that the reasons for competing candidates to “go negative” on their opponents during elections—that is, attacking their opponents instead of promoting their own programs or ideas stem from strategic considerations. Yet, existing research has, at this stage, failed to assess whether candidates’ personality traits also play a role. In this article, we bridge the gap between existing work in political psychology and political communication and study to what extent the personality traits of competing candidates are linked with their use of negative campaigning strategies. We rely on candidate survey data for recent elections in three countries—Germany (2017), Switzerland (2019), and Finland (2019). The data includes self-reported measures for candidates’ “Big Five” personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness) and the the use of attacks towards their opponents during the campaign. Controlling for the usual suspects driving the use of negative campaigning we show that this latter is associated with low agreeableness and (marginally) with high extraversion and low conscientiousness. The role of personality for the focus of an attack (issue vs. character attacks) is somewhat less clear-cut. All in all, kinder and more stable candidates tend to go less negative; when they do, they tend to stay away from character-based attacks and somehow focus on issues.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Hardwired to attack. Candidates’ personality traits and negative campaigning in three European countries

2022

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“…In this sense, suggestion is the main psychological element of propaganda (Schuster, 2020). Thus, while in any other electoral campaign environment the personal characteristics of the candidates are irrelevant, in the case of electoral propaganda they become central (Garzia, Ferreira da Silva, 2021). Therefore, the political and electoral propaganda context in which campaign materials are used are the perfect scenario to make use of emotions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The use of emotions in 2019 European Elections campaign materials

2021

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This research analyses three fundamental questions to determine how, when and by whom emotions are used in campaign materials (political propaganda). Focusing on the 2019 European elections we carry out a three-phase analysis. Firstly, we check the use of rational content against content that appeals to voters’ emotions. Secondly, we observe which of these emo tions are channelled towards the use of negative strategies and, therefore, identifying who is the object of this attack. And lastly, we determine which party families make the most use of humorous content since this resource is believed to be part of an appeal to voter’s feelings and, therefore, it is essential to know if there are differences between political groups. Considering this analytical strategy, the structure of the work begins with the contextualisation of the 2019 European elections to focus, later, on highlighting the importance of electoral campaigns as a given time when communicative activity intensifies. Once the importance of electoral campaigns has been defined the article analyses how campaign materials, in a general context of political propaganda, are one of the most powerful tools. In this sense, the analytical strategy of political parties’ campaign materials can be said to focus on the use of emotions. Data from the European Elections Monitoring Center (EEMC) has been used not only for theoretical contextualization, but throughout the whole paper.

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“…In parallel, research on the personalization of politics (Poguntke and Webb 2005;Passarelli 2015;Elgie and Passarelli 2019;Garzia et al, 2020) finds that negative attitudes toward the political out-group concern not only political parties but can also spill over to individual candidates (Barisione, 2017). Accordingly, evaluations of (out-party) candidates have been shown to also act as determinants of the vote, acting alongside positive (in-party) candidate evaluations (Garzia and Ferreira da Silva, 2021a).…”

Section: The Decline Of Structural Determinants Of Electors' Decisionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among the consequences of this riding tide of political distrust, it has been observed a tendency among voters to increasingly dislike parties and candidates they do not support--while becoming more ambivalent toward parties they support. Available research shows that voters' evaluation of their own parties and candidates is stable, yet voters have come to dislike their opponents more over time (Abramowitz and Webster, 2016;Garzia and Ferreira da Silva, 2021a).…”

Section: The Decline Of Structural Determinants Of Electors' Decisionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Italy in times of protest and negative voting: An introduction

Garzia

Passarelli

2021

QOE-IJES

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The classic heuristics of voting behaviour have been eroded overtime especially in well-established democracies. Ideology, party identification, and social class have been gradually replaced by short-period factors. In particular, the personalization has represented an innovative variable that significantly contributes to explain voting behaviour. Cross-pressures between party identification, candidate assessments and issue preferences paved the way to the diffusion of protest voting, both against the élite and the system. In this respect, Italy represents a very interesting case from both a theoretical and an empirical point view considering the presence of protest parties and the important diffusion of anti-system movements which surfed the protest to consolidate their positions. The editors conceived this special issue aiming at analysing and measuring the impact of protest/negative voting in Italy between 2016 and 2020, a period in which protest parties and voters’ discontent have significantly increased. Data presented by the different papers confirm, albeit under different perspectives, the relevance of this peculiar form of political behaviour.

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Negative personalization and voting behavior in 14 parliamentary democracies, 1961–2018

Cited by 25 publications

References 46 publications

Hardwired to attack. Candidates’ personality traits and negative campaigning in three European countries

Hardwired to attack. Candidates’ personality traits and negative campaigning in three European countries

The use of emotions in 2019 European Elections campaign materials

Italy in times of protest and negative voting: An introduction

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