When Ansolabehere and Iyengar began the study that is detailed in their book Going Negative they had made a number of assumptions that their data eventually failed to support. They set out to determine three effects of television marketing of political candidates. Their first question was whether these advertisements had a distorting effect in terms of the information they provided and levels of voter learning. Their second question dealt with the persuasive power of the ads and whether voter choice was being manipulated by television spots. The third question asked whether either mobilization or demobilization (lower voter participation) resulted from viewing the ads.
The authors found that most of the negative effects of political advertising, which they had been led to expect by the previous literature, did not exist. Rather than adding very little to voter information or actually impeding voter learning, Ansolabehere and Iyengar found that television advertising had a high information value and that voter learning rose along with the increasing intensity of particular ad campaigns. The literature also indicated that advertising had little effect on persuading voters. But the authors found that exposure to television ads significantly raised voter support for particular candidates. The advertising also had the effect of increasing the importance of particular issues for voters. Manipulation of choices was not a factor since voters tended to be persuaded by advertising to vote along party lines and for candidates whose positions they were already predisposed to favor.
The authors did find a significant negative effect of television advertising in the area of voter demobilization. As they explain, prior to the rise of television advertising the principal job of a candidate was to mobilize the electorate. The more voters he or she could get to the polls, the greater her or his chances were of being elected. Televisi...