ABSTRACT
Negative advertising is sometimes called attack advertising because the point of the advertisement is to diminish the political fortunes of the subject of the attack, providing an advantage to the attacker. Negative advertisements are distinguished from positive ads, also called promotional ads, that seek to advocate for a policy or the election of an individual. Political advertising is an extraordinarily lucrative industry. Political campaigns spend over half of their revenues on media. Changes in campaign finance laws in the US explain a great deal of the uptick in advertising spending. New regulations and court decisions have allowed the formation of “super-political action committees” (PACs) that are far less regulated than the PACs of the past and have less of an ongoing connection to traditional interests groups. While candidates cannot control whether interests groups “go negative” against their opponents, they can decide whether their own campaign will do so.
