With the election fast approaching, it has become the “Nasty Season” in political advertising. All the surveys and other research I have read about their effectiveness, that is the effectiveness of negative ads, is the only thing they tend to do is turn everybody off and reduce voter turnout. I wonder why they use negative ads then. They must feel their supporters will turn out while the other sides won’t. It doesn’t seem to depend on which party because the negative advertising seems to depend on the individual candidates. Some candidates of both parties refused to use negative advertising. Negative advertising is a puzzling fact. It’s also very annoying! I don’t care who’s doing it. I wish we could tell the politicians to stop it and they would listen, but they won’t. They don’t listen to us on anything else, so why would they listen to us about ads in the “Nasty Season?” Comments? Suggestions?
3 Responses
I wonder if it’s because in America your voting is not compulsory. Politicians do notice heaps when they receive “donkey” votes, it’s when the individual turns up to vote (you must have your name written off on a register) and deliberately stuff up the votes or cross it out completely. I have a few times done this because I believed at the time no one was or had anything value for me. I am a minority (a couple and childless) everything is about schools, children etc. Nothing that suits me directly. Negativity works because of the fear factor, they want them to get angry at the candidate therefore they (advert) are hoping the voter will not vote for the bad press person and vote for the person the advert was really trying to advertise for. Very psych thought.
Yup, Nasty Season is a great name for it,
I think the negative ads I have seen from both sides this year dramatically more hurtful. The negative ads I have seen lately are so over the top
that, in themselves, they lack credibility. Nobody is really as bad as the other side claims. I am getting good at ignoring Nasty ads. It is a skill I have learned by not paying attention to advertising. Good work VC
I half expect to see an ad that goes something like this – my opponent killed his grandfather and raped his grandmother and then stole all their money. He and his wife run a brothel and use their children in child porn and worse yet they didn’t pay taxes on any of these ill-gotten gains.