Negative Campaigns vs. Mueller

In Mueller’s Chapter 20.2: Models of interest group behavior in politics, he differentiates the effects of informative and persuasive campaigning on voter behavior. Mueller defines informative advertising as when a “candidate informs voters of her position on x”. This type of advertising increases the probability that some voters will vote for the candidate but also decreases the probability that other voters will vote for the candidate. On the other hand, persuasive advertising increases the probability that all voters will vote for the candidate by highlighting issues that all voters agree on.

Mueller fails to take into account the role of negative campaigning commonly referred to as “attack ads”, but negative advertising shares characteristics of both informative and persuasive campaigning. In this article http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/lies-and-campaign-advertising-4757/, Amy Ramos proves how even though the public claims they hate negative campaigns, we actually benefit from this type of advertising. Vanderbilt’s John Greer claims, “Positive ads are less likely to be about issues, less documented in their claims and far more vague than negative ads. Those who want issue-oriented campaigns should in fact see much merit in negative ads.” It is obvious that most candidates use persuasive advertising because it increases the probability that all voters will vote for them, but candidates also use negative ads to both inform voters of the negative aspects of their opponent while persuading the voters not to vote for their opponent. Consequently, under Mueller’s model, we could predict that negative campaign expenditures would be similar to persuasive campaign expenditures. Let NC be expenditures on negative campaigning:

∂ π_iL / ∂ NC_L > 0, ∂ π_iR / ∂ NC_L < 0 for all i

It can be argued that using negative advertising can both hurt and help a candidate’s campaign. Negative advertising can hurt a candidate’s reputation when the advertising is “uncivil” or “trait-based” but can also help a candidate win votes if the negative information in their advertisement is legitimate. Whether or not voters like negative advertising, it is very common and successful in many campaigns.