ABSTRACT
Many Americans say they dislike political campaigns because of mudslinging between candidates, but Lipsitz explains why campaigns are so important for representative democracy. Scholars have long argued that hard-fought, competitive elections yield more information to voters about candidates, but Lipsitz wants to know whether this information is substantively “good.” By good she means whether the information actually promotes democratic values such as free choice, equality, and deliberation. The conventional wisdom is that negative advertising produces useless, even harmful information for voters. Lipsitz shows otherwise. Using unique data on campaign ads, she measures how the substance of congressional campaigns varies at different levels of competition. Remarkably, she finds that even slight improvements in competition yield substantial gains in providing quality information to voters. Yet, few elections for Congress are competitive, which means many voters are not benefiting from the rich information that elections potentially provide. The research raises important questions about what kinds of reforms might improve the competitiveness of elections. Lipsitz's work also shows how scholars try to measure complex concepts such as political equality or deliberation and how to use straightforward statistics to predict outcomes.
