Study: Negative campaign ads much more frequent, vicious than in primaries past

By T.W. Farnam, Monday, February 20, 11:22 AM

If you thought you were living through a particularly nasty presidential primary, turns out you were right.

Four years, ago, just 6 percent of campaign advertising in the GOP primary amounted to attacks on other Republicans, a figure that has shot up to over 50 percent in this election, according to Kantar Media/CMAG, an ad-tracking firm.

And the negative ads are not just more frequent — they also appear to be more vitriolic.

In 2008, one of harshest ads run by Mitt Romney ahead of the Iowa caucus criticized Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) position on immigration, but only after calling him “an honorable man.”

In 2012, such a nicety seems quaint.

Romney’s campaign began running an ad Friday in Michigan showing a limp body sinking in murky water, while a narrator intones: “America is drowning in national debt, yet Rick Santorum supported billions in earmarks.”

All of this invective is flowing in an election season when Republicans had hoped to train their resources on beating President Obama — candidates typically save their harshest attacks for the general election, largely sparing their fellow party members.

But a wildly unpredictable GOP primary has upended that plan and dissolved the truce. It is happening largely because of new rules governing campaign money. Also, this race has a different dynamic, a front-runner who lacks a prohibitive lead.

Once the tone of the race turned negative, it stayed that way. One Ron Paul campaign ad calls Newt Gingrich a “serial hypocrite.” Another, from a group backing Romney, asks, “Haven’t we had enough mistakes” from Gingrich?

A group backing Gingrich accused Romney of being a “corporate raider,” showing footage of an elderly woman saying, “I feel that is the man who destroyed us.” Another spot from the group accuses Romney of making “blood money” from a company found guilty of bilking the government for Medicare payments.

Romney and the groups backing him have led the trend, spending two-thirds of their money on negative ads. Gingrich and the Winning Our Future PAC backing him have spent half of their funds on spots attacking other Republicans. Santorum and the PACs behind him have devoted one out of four dollars to attack ads.

Winning Our Future spokesman Rick Tyler said his group’s message was positive until it was forced to counter Romney’s “scorched earth” strategy.

“When this whole campaign started, the Republicans were very enthusiastic,” Tyler said. Romney’s approach, he said, also is depressing turnout. “By the time he’s done, there will be no one left to vote against Barack Obama.”

The Romney and Gingrich campaigns did not return requests for comment, and Restore Our Future, the largest super PAC supporting Romney, declined to comment.

Party strategists point to million-dollar political contributions to super PACs as part of the reason for the negativity.

Data show that super PACs, which have run more advertising than the campaigns themselves, have spent 72 percent of their money on negative ads. The figure for campaigns is 27 percent, according to data from Kantar, which tracks television advertising across the country. (For this article, ads were considered negative if they mentioned another Republican candidate.)

Super PACs can accept corporate money and personal checks over the $2,500 limit to campaigns, but they are legally prohibited from coordinating ads with the campaigns they are trying to help.

That makes it harder for the PAC ads to feature candidates. And because stock footage and voice-overs can be dull, the result has been more negative ads.

“Super PACs are left with no good choices,” said Brad Todd, a veteran GOP ad man who worked for Romney and the Republican Party in 2008 but is unaffiliated in this year’s contest. “If they didn’t run comparison or contrast ads, they would have some very boring television.”

Super PACs don’t have to follow the “stand by your ad” provision of campaign laws, which requires candidates to state clearly that they approve of the message. Candidates, in fact, have tried to deflect blame for the tone of the contest, saying they don’t have control over the spots run by super PACs.

But many strategists have noted that the super PACs, typically run by former aides to the candidate, can easily glean cues from the campaigns.

“There are so many forms of communication other than picking up the phone and saying, ‘We like that negative ad — double the buy,’ ” said one Republican media consultant who worked for a candidate no longer in the race. “It’s not that hard to have a symbiotic relationship.”

Studies of advertising before the 2008 race are not directly comparable but generally show that Democratic primaries in 2004 and 2008 were also less negative than this year’s race.

Even before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, the race turned negative.

The first ad from Restore Our Future, a super PAC backing Romney, said that “Newt Gingrich has more baggage than the airlines.”

That, said several GOP strategists, signaled to the other candidates that they would need to go negative.

“I think that staying positive through Iowa, through $3.5 million of negative attacks, proved you either have to unilaterally disarm and leave the race or you have to at least bring up your competitor’s record,” Gingrich said at a debate last month.

Romney’s campaign and the super PACs behind him have also dominated the airspace, running more than half of all the advertising in the race.

“Mitt Romney has resorted to a carpet-bombing strategy that helped him win some early primaries,” said Mark McKinnon, a political strategist for McCain and George W. Bush, “but his favorable impression among independents has collapsed. Seems likely there is some correlation.”

Obama advisers are looking on with glee as the Republicans bash one another. Romney in particular has been thrown off his message attacking Obama in order to take down other Republicans.

“He spent last year saying he was just going to make a general election argument, and I don’t think anyone would say that’s what he was doing for the past three months,” said one Obama adviser. “He’s been trying to get to the right of Gingrich and Santorum.”

Study: Negative campaign ads much more frequent, vicious than in primaries past - The Washington Post