Negative Voter Support in Presidential Elections

Motivations for Negative Voting in the 1992 Presidential Election

“…Recall that we hypothesized that challengers to incumbents would receive a higher level of negative support than would incumbents. Table 1 demonstrates that Perot enjoyed the highest level of negative voting; indeed, according to our figures, just over one-half of Perot's support was negative, rivaling that of Ronald Reagan in 1980 (Gant and Davis 1984). These data also suggest that Perot captured most of the anti-Bush vote, in that Clinton's negative support was only slightly higher than that for Bush.…”

“…Negative voting has been examined in every presidential election since 1952 (Brody and Page 1973;Weisberg and Grofman 1981;Gant and Davis 1984;Gant and Sigelrnan 1985;Sigelman and Gant 1989;Gant and Richardson 1993). Its impact on the political system, especially on presidential popularity and presidential success in Congress, has also been the object of study (Gant and Richardson 1993).…”

“…These studies indicate that negative voting is an important aspect of American electoral politics whose impact has increased over time. For example, about 13.5% of Dwight Eisenhower's support in 1952 could be classified as negative support, while in 1980 over one-half of Ronald Reagan's support was negative (Gant and Davis 1984). In the 1988 election just over one-third of George Bush's supporters could be classified as having cast a vote against his Democratic opponents (Gant and Richardson 1993).…”

“…Past research indicates, first of all, that challengers benefit from negative voting, while incumbents suffer from this phenomenon. Moreover, Gant and Davis (1984) argue that the factors leading to negative voting are making it increasingly difficult for incumbent presidents to be reelected. Gant and Richardson (1993) expand on this argument by showing that negative voting against the incumbent is strongly related to the expectations gap that occurs when presidents are not able to bridge the gap between promise and performance (Ostrom and Simon 1985).…”

Negativity and Failed Expectations: do Representatives' Reputations Really Matter?

“…The majority of studies that went on to capitalize on this early observation have sought evidence for negativity exclusively in presidential contests (e.g. Key 1966;Page 1976;Gant and Davis 1984;Gant and Richardson 1993). However, if negative voting is as important an aspect of electoral politics as the literature seems to suggest, there is no reason to expect this to be a trend that is unique to presidential contests alone.…”