Insults May Not Lead to Votes After All

Name-calling in politics grabs headlines, but voters don鈥檛 like it鈥攁nd it could backfire in the 2022 midterm elections.

Spending on political advertising is setting records in the midterm elections. But evidence shows that negative messages might discourage voters from casting ballots altogether.

As the 2022 midterms get closer, political attacks in campaign advertisements are on the rise.

In November, Republican showing him physically attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, and President Joe Biden.

That same month, Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar called her Republican colleague Rep. Lauren Boebert on Twitter. Even the official White House Twitter account has gotten in on the politically divisive action, making when it snapped back in August 2022 at several Republican members of Congress who criticized the 鈥攁fter they themselves had their loans forgiven.

Uncivil messages by politicians have in the past decade. Political attacks are now a regular occurrence in an increasingly polarized political environment, ahead of Election Day in November.

But that doesn鈥檛 mean these kinds of advertisements and personal attacks actually work.

and, as a former campaign manager and political consultant, have seen politicians use uncivil strategies firsthand with the hopes of getting themselves elected. on political advertising suggests that highly polarized communications could be losing their persuasive power and can even backfire in the upcoming midterms, hurting a candidate鈥檚 chances.

The Impacts of Political Attack Ads

shows that political ads and language do indeed put people in a negative mood. Even simply asking voters to is enough to get them angry. This negativity is amplified if an ad an opposing candidate.

There is also evidence that this anger carries over to voting behavior. Data from U.S. elections from 2000 to 2012 shows that negative political TV commercials make people less likely to vote for the attacked politician, but also make to .

Politicians tend to use on social media compared with their advertising on television, however. This might be because social media attracts a smaller, more targeted audience, and perhaps candidates fear that these kinds of tactics could demobilize supporters.

The Rise of Polarization

There are a few factors that help explain why political campaigns and attacks on opponents have become more toxic in recent years.

First off, voters are than ever before. This emotion about politics has been linked to the and 鈥攆or example, close presidential elections.

Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. are also . This social polarization comes as than ever before. Being a Democrat or a Republican is a core part of who the voter is and shapes both their political decisions鈥攍ike whom they vote for鈥攁s well as their nonpolitical ones, like whom they hang out with.

Given these factors, conversations about politics are increasingly happening among people who already agree on political issues.

Politicians like former President and others seem to be leveraging the fact that they are preaching to the choir, so to speak, and are using to attack the other side.

Whether language is polarized or not is a subjective question, but my research and the work of others has focused on and .

Donald Trump and his supporters were known during the 2016 campaign for chanting 鈥淟ock her up!鈥� in reference to Hillary Clinton. Photo by

The Declining Power of Polarized Messaging

There is some evidence that voters may be getting tired of negative political communications flooding their screens.

Using data from the 2016 U.S. presidential election, my collaborators and I found that political ad messages that are more polarized .

Specifically, we found that voters prefer more centrist and more consistent messaging in political ads, at least in the contexts of recent presidential elections. This research used text analysis methods, which allowed us to score each ad for how polarized the messaging was as well as how consistent the messaging was for the candidate.

Polarized messages particularly hurt a candidate鈥檚 election chances if they are 鈥攖hat is, for politicians who are typically moderate, and then try to go extreme.

A protester and a supporter of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh argue before Kavanaugh鈥檚 confirmation in 2018. Photo by

Looking Ahead to the 2022 Midterms

There鈥檚 a in the upcoming midterm elections in November 2022, as every House seat and about one-third of the Senate seats are up for grabs. A record-setting in political ad spending is expected for this midterm election season.

If the dominant tone of this messaging is toxic, political campaigns run the risk of disengaging more and more voters.

shows that there are emerging consequences of polarized communications that can hurt candidates in the polls. These insights may encourage political campaigns to test different ad strategies this midterm, perhaps curbing the negativity.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Beth L. Fossen is an empirical modeler, and her primary research areas include advertising, online word-of-mouth, social media, and political marketing. Her research has been published in Marketing Science, Customer Needs and Solutions, and Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. Beth joined the Marketing Department at the Kelley School of Business in July 2016. She earned her Ph.D. in Marketing at Emory University.