Mitchell Lovett, associate professor of marketing at the Simon Business School, studies the effects of negative advertising in politics, a trend that he says has been on a significant rise over the last two decades. Despite the negative tone of the 2016 presidential debates, he says this year is the first since 2000 that there has not been an increase in the percentage of negative political ads.
The peak for that statistic came in 2012, when nearly 90 percent of the ads were negative in nature. This year, the number has hovered around the mid 70s, with television advertising of each campaign focusing more energy on building up its own candidate, rather than tearing the opponent down. If that statistic doesn’t seem to match the tenor of the race overall, it’s important to note that it doesn’t take into account media coverage and social media postings, among other campaign outreach.
Even this year’s numbers are much higher than the historical numbers. Prior to 2000, it would have been more common to see negative ads in the 30-40% range, but Lovett says those days are probably gone.
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