HaoYuan

Jiang 20371798

Campaign Strategy in 2012 American Presidential Election

A peek into negative campaigning in swing states

Paul Harris describes the 2012 American presidential election as the most negative campaign in recent memory in the US in the news article named Romney and Obama duel over negative ads as campaign enters bitter phase. (Harris, 2012) In this close-up election, tremendous amount of money was spent airing campaign advertisements in swing states such as Ohio and Florida. Quite a number of attack ads came from both Romney and Obama campaign. The report by Peter Bell shows that a total of about two hundred million dollars are spent in campaign advertisements in Ohio alone. (Bell, 2012) In this essay, I will explore how negative campaigning works as well as examine the reason why campaign strategists focused their efforts in swing states. I will also discuss possible effects of deploying negative campaigning in democratic process. Negative campaigning can mislead voters by manipulating their availability heuristics. The availability heuristics refers to when people base their judgments on what pops in their mind quickly with little effort. Events that are more recent, more vivid, and more distinct seem more commonplace. (Krause & Corts, 2012, p. 286) Voters will remember candidates failures very vividly when attack ads featuring these failures are run over and over again. As a result, when voters think of the attacked candidate, his failures appear to be more commonplace. Hence the voters are more likely to evaluate the candidate as less

competent than he actually is. Example of such negative advertisement comes from Obama campaign where various advertisements are run highlighting Romneys failure in Bain Capital. These advertisements may have successfully brought down voters faith in Romney as a successful businessman by making the voters thing Romney made more mistakes in private sector than he actually did. The polls showed that Romney started strong as the candidate to restore the economy and Obama caught up half way during the campaign. (Zeleny, 2012) Anchoring effect explains how negative campaigning can change voters perspective even when they know the advertisements are not fair. Anchoring effect is a cognitive bias that people tend to rely too much on the first piece of information provided (the anchor) when making their judgments. (Krause & Corts, p. 286) When a negative message is exaggerated in an attack ad, voters tend to form their own judgment close to the exaggeration. In all three of the American presidential debates, Barack Obama critised Mitt Romneys tax cut as a five trillion dollar tax cut, despite people may be aware that this statement is an exaggeration, they might have formed their own opinion subconsciously picking a number close enough to five trillion that makes them reject Romneys tax cut. On the other hand, Romney used the slogan we cannot afford 4 more years of Obama to criticise Obamas healthcare reform. This slogan is much weaker because it does not provide any anchor in number for people to rely on. Belief preservation and confirmation bias explain why campaign strategists choose to focus their efforts in swing states. Belief preservation occurs when one has a strong belief in certain issues, he or she will only consider evidence that

confirms his or her belief. Confirmation bias occurs when one seeks evidence that confirms his or her belief. These two phenomenon show that people tends to cling to their own believes in the face of contrary evidence. (Krause & Corts, p. 287) The campaign advertisements aim to convince voters to vote for one candidate. This power of persuasion is stronger when voters do not believe in any candidates firmly yet, aka swing voters. Campaigning works poorly in converting voters when the voters already have a strong set of believes. In 2012 American presidential election, red states and blue states (those states whose residents predominantly vote for Republicans or Democrats) like California and Texas seemed to be completely forsaken by the campaigns. Belief preservation and confirmation bias help to rationalize this campaign decision that no matter what the campaigns do, it is unlikely that people in these states are going to change their minds so drastically that make them swing to the other side. The article Negative Political Advertising and Choice Conflict (Houston, Doan, & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 1999) presents studies in the topic of choice conflict by designing experiments mimicking elections in America. The American political system is chosen because it features only two major parties and most elections will require voters to make dichotomous choices. The choice conflict involved in such a system is more straightforward. Two group of participants are involved in the experiment where they are exposed to positive and negative campaigning of two fictional candidates-one republican and the other democrat. The difference is that one group of participants is provided with information that supports the appraisal and attack on the candidates while the other group of participants is not.

 The studies show that positive campaigns, focusing on positive qualities of candidates, will make voters give both candidates higher evaluation. They argue that choice made in this scenario features an approach-approach choice conflict where voters will try to decide which candidate is better and vote for him. In this case, voters express more willingness to vote. On the other hand, Negative campaigns, focusing on negative qualities of candidates, will make voters give both candidates lower evaluation. Choice made in this scenario features an avoid-avoid choice conflict where voters will try to determine which candidate is worse and voter for the other. In this case, voters express less willingness to vote. The differences in experimental results for the two groups of participants are marginal. This shows that whether claims in campaigns are based on facts or not does affect the effectiveness of campaigns as much as we normally think. The studies also show that individual campaigns do not decisively influence how voter perceive the candidates. If the candidate with shared ideology (shared ideology candidate) with the voter runs a negative campaign while the opposing candidate runs a positive campaign, the voters will not disapprove the shared ideology candidate while they disapprove the opposing candidate to a greater extent. However, when the opposing candidate also runs a negative campaign, the voters will perceive the whole campaign as negative and start giving the shared ideology candidate lower evaluation. Additionally, if the candidate with shared ideology with the voter runs a positive campaign while the opposing candidate runs a negative campaign, the voters regard the shared ideology candidate more highly while condemning the opposing candidate. Voters

evaluation on the opposing candidate will only improve if he is running a positive campaign too. Experimental results reveal that when both candidates engage in negative campaigning, voters will give them the lowest evaluations in all cases and the difference between evaluation of shared ideology candidate and his opponent is smallest. Results of the study provide possible explanation as to why negative campaigning is becoming more commonplace during recent American elections. The trailing candidate would want to narrow the gap in evaluation between the opponent and himself. Based on the studies, he has more chance achieving this if the overall campaign environment of the election is negative. Hence it is in his best interest to start his own negative campaign. A constantly attacking campaign will likely compel your opponent to answer your attacks with his or her own negative campaign and make the overall campaign negative. The leading candidate, realizing that the trailing candidate is very likely to resort to negative campaigning, might start his own negative campaign before him to gain a strategic edge. In fact, in 2012 American presidential election, Barack Obama started his attack ads against Mitt Romney even before Romney secured the Republican nomination though Obama was the candidate leading the polls. In conclusion, negative campaigning works by manipulating certain cognitive bias of the voters. It is most effective when deployed in states where the race is more close-up. Studies presented show that negative campaigning is only good as a strategy to win elections. In the short term, negative campaigning will make voters less likely to vote in the coming election. In the long term, it may make

people habitual non-voters and create a generation of political empathy. Hence, using negative campaigning as the strategy to win elections is not good for a democracy to thrive in a society.

References
Main articles: Harris, P. (2012, Aug 15). Romney and Obama duel over negative ads as campaign enters bitter phase. Retrieved from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/15/romney-obama-negative-ads Supporting articles: Bell, P. (2012, Nov 4). Ad Spending in Presidential Battleground States. Retrieved from National Journal: http://www.nationaljournal.com/hotline/ad-spending- in-presidential-battleground-states-20120620 Zeleny, J. (2012, 9 14). Poll Finds Obama Is Erasing Romneys Edge on Economy. Retrieved from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/us/politics/obama-erases-romneys- edge-on-economy-poll-finds.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Textbook: Krause, M., & Corts, D. (2012). Psychological Science: Modeling Scientific Literacy. Journal article: Houston, D. A., Doan, K., & Roskos-Ewoldsen, D. (1999). Negative Political Advertising and Choice Conflict. Journal of Experimenal Psychology: Applied , 5 (1), 3-16.