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Yale Study: Negative Ads a Turnoff
Interactive television experiment tests Bush's “RATS” ad
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Business New Haven
10/30/2000
By: BNH
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NEW HAVEN - As the Presidential campaign nears its climax, the advertising campaigns of Vice President Albert Gore Jr. and Texas Gov. George W. Bush swell in a crescendo of cacophonous claims and counterclaims.
This campaign season, voters have demanded a measure of civility from the candidates. And, judging by the tenor of the three Presidential and one vice presidential debates, they have largely been rewarded.
Their advertising campaigns, however, have been another matter.
Experts are deeply divided over the efficacy of negative advertising, but the results of an innovative interactive television survey by a Yale faculty member, released October 13, suggests the campaigns' message-makers may be barking up the wrong tree.
˜Negative political advertising has little positive impact in the presidential race,” concludes Yale professor John Lapinski, who conducted the study with colleagues.
While the survey shows that negative political advertisements have not helped either Presidential candidate by much, it also indicates that George W. Bush's “Priority” ad, better known as the “RATS” commercial, was somewhat more effective than Al Gore's negative ads.
A plurality of viewers perceive the presidential campaign to be “extremely negative,” with 45 percent describing Bush's campaign and 40 percent describing the Gore campaign as such. Only 27 and 24 percent believe that the campaigns of Bush and Gore, respectively, have been positive.
The biggest finding pertains to the effect of ads on independent voters - those not firmly committed to either candidate. The experiment finds that showing two negative campaign ads to a nationally representative sample of registered voters makes them more likely to support Bush, especially among independents.
Of those independents who saw the ads, nearly 42 percent “leaned” towards Bush, compared to only 28 percent toward Gore. By contrast, 35 and 34 percent of those not seeing the ads leaned towards Bush and Gore, respectively.
“The bottom line is that after seeing two negative political ads, independent voters lean more towards Bush than Gore,” says Lapinski.
The survey applied an innovative research design using interactive television to poll a statistically representative sample of registered voters. Survey respondents were recruited through telephone interviewing and were equipped with WebTVs. The interactive television survey allowed respondents to view actual political ads on their own TVs in their own homes.
The survey was a part of a larger polling project sponsored by Yale's Institution for Social & Policy Studies. The principal investigator for the project, Lapinski, is an assistant professor of political science and the director of Yale's New Media Workshop.
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