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Sept 19-25, 2022

Thursday 9/21/22

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Name-calling in politics grabs headlines
The Conversation, Beth L. FossenSeptember 22, 2022

Spending on political advertising is setting records in the midterm elections. But evidence shows that negative messages might discourage voters from casting ballots altogether.

As the 2022 midterms get closer, political attacks in campaign advertisements are on the rise.

In November, Rep. Paul Gosar shared an anime cartoon video showing him physically attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, and President Joe Biden.

That same month, Rep. Ilhan Omar called her Republican colleague Rep. Lauren Boebert a buffoon and a bigot on Twitter. Even the official White House Twitter account has gotten in on the politically divisive action, making recent headlines when it snapped back in August 2022 at several Republican members of Congress who criticized the Paycheck Protection Program – after they themselves had their loans forgiven.

Uncivil messages by politicians have become more and more common in the last decade. Political attacks are now a regular occurrence in an increasingly polarized political environment, encouraging voters to get mad and plan to vote ahead of Election Day in November.

But that doesn’t mean these kinds of advertisements and personal attacks actually work.

I study political marketing and, as a former campaign manager and political consultant, have seen politicians use uncivil strategies firsthand with the hopes of getting themselves elected. My research on political advertising suggests that highly polarized communications could be losing their persuasive power and can even backfire in the upcoming midterms, hurting a candidate’s chances.

The impacts of political attack ads

My research shows that political ads and language do indeed put people in a negative mood. Even simply asking voters to think about politics is enough to get them angry. This negativity is amplified if an ad specifically attacks an opposing candidate.

There is also evidence that this anger carries over to voting behavior. Data from U.S. elections from 2000 to 2012 shows that negative political TV commercials make people less likely to vote for the attacked politician, but also make people less likely to vote in general.

Politicians tend to use less negative, polarizing advertising on social media compared to their advertising on television, however. This might be because social media attracts a smaller, more targeted audience, and perhaps candidates fear that these kinds of tactics could demobilize supporters.

The rise of polarization

There are a few factors that help explain why political campaigns and attacks on opponents have become more toxic in recent years.

First off, voters are more emotional and angrier than ever before. This emotion about politics has been linked to the normalcy of anger in our day-to-day lives and increased political competition – for example, close presidential elections.

Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. are also interacting less and less. This social polarization comes as political identity is more important to voters than ever before. Being a Democrat or a Republican is a core part of who the voter is and shapes both their political decisions – like whom they vote for – as well as their nonpolitical ones, like whom they hang out with.

Given these factors, conversations about politics are increasingly happening among people who already agree on political issues.

Politicians like former President Donald Trump and others seem to be leveraging the fact that they are preaching to the choir, so to speak, and are using more and more polarized language to attack the other side.

Whether language is polarized or not is a subjective question, but my research and the work of others has focused on how negative a political message is and how extreme the message is.

Women and men stand together with protest signs that say 'Make America Great Again' and 'Lock her up' at a Trump rally.
Donald Trump and his supporters were known during the 2016 campaign for chanting ‘Lock her up!’ in reference to Hillary Clinton. David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

The declining power of polarized messaging

There is some evidence that voters may be getting tired of negative political communications flooding their screens.

Using data from the 2016 U.S. presidential election, my collaborators and I found that political ad messages that are more polarized hurt candidates in the polls and lead voters to talk less about the candidate.

Specifically, we find that voters prefer more centrist and more consistent messaging in political ads, at least in the contexts of recent presidential elections. This research used text analysis methods, which allowed us to score each ad for how polarized the messaging was as well as how consistent the messaging was for the candidate.

Polarized messages particularly hurt a candidate’s election chances if they are off-brand for the candidate – that is, for politicians who are typically moderate, and then try to go extreme.

A white man in a red hat appears to be arguing with a young black man in a crowded scene that looks like a protest.
A protester and a supporter of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh argue before his confirmation in 2018. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Looking ahead to the 2022 midterms

There’s a lot at stake in the upcoming midterm elections in November 2022, as every House seat and about one-third of the Senate seats are up for grabs. A record-setting US$8.9 billion in political ad spending is expected for this midterm election season.

If the dominant tone of this messaging is toxic, political campaigns run the risk of disengaging more and more voters.

My research shows that there are emerging consequences of polarized communications that can hurt candidates in the polls. These insights may encourage political campaigns to test different ad strategies this midterm, perhaps curbing the negativity.

Students Interview the Candidates
September 7, 2022 (02:30)

Moderator: Connor Oatman, US onAir – connor.oatman@onair.cc
Aircaster: Ben Murphy, US onAir – ben.murphy@onair.cc

Featured Guest: Congressman Don Beyer, US House VA-08
Student Guests: Valentina Autorina, Frida Cervantes, Devin Pieczynski, Gabriel Yu from George Mason University.  Students asked Congressman Don Beyer about his positions on a number of issues including engaging students in US democracy, Northern Virginia mass transit, abortion and funding college education.

WATCH: Biden addresses UN General Assembly
PBS NewsHour, September 21, 2022 – 10:00 am (ET)
‘Are the Polls Wrong?’ Is the Wrong Question
Politico, Stephen Clermont September 20, 2022

A pollster’s guide to keeping your sanity before the midterms.

If you, like me, obsessively follow elections, the next 50 days will be filled with predictions, freakouts and contradictory data. I have already had several friends and family members send me the New York Times’ “Are the Polls Wrong Again?” piece, panicked that Democrats could be leading by too much in some Senate races.

As a professional pollster, my advice to the nerve-wracked polling junkie is simple: Take a deep breath, embrace the uncertainty and go beneath the surface of the polls to better understand the dynamics this year

It’s true that my industry has struggled at times to accurately gauge public opinion, particularly in the Trump era. Is it possible that we’re missing Republicans or Trump supporters in surveys? Perhaps. But it’s just as wrongheaded to assume that polls are inevitably faulty and that historical trends or calculations to unskew the polls are more important.

Election officials struggle to recruit poll workers for midterms amid growing threats
PBS NewsHourSeptember 19, 2022 (09:51)

Election Day is less than two months away, yet there’s a critical missing element that could slow down the voting process. It takes more than a million people working the polls to make American elections run smoothly. Between retirements and concerns about COVID, tens of thousands of poll workers have left the job over the past several election cycles. William Brangham reports.

Amy Walter and Asma Khalid on Hispanic voters and the midterms
PBS NewsHourSeptember 19, 2022 (08:50)

Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter and Asma Khalid of NPR join Judy Woodruff to discuss the latest political news, including Republicans pushing to make immigration and the southern border a key issue and a new poll of Hispanic voters ahead of the midterms.

Discuss

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