Toggle Menu

The Breakdown: Do Negative Campaign Ads Sway Voters?

With attack ads battling it out on airwaves across the country, Chris Hayes asks Stanford professor Shanto Iyengar: do negative ads ever have positive effects?

Chris Hayes

October 29, 2010

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio

With candidates' campaign ads battling it out on the airwaves and on our TV screens leading up to next week's elections, Chris Hayes and Stanford professor Shanto Iyengar get to the bottom of whether negative ads ever have positive effects.

With days to go until the midterm elections and with buckets of money being poured into this year’s races, negative campaign ads are battling it out on airwaves and on TV screens across the country. But are these smear campaigns actually beneficial to the candidates who fund them? Do they leave a lasting impression in voters’ minds or just a bad taste in their mouths? And if they do work in swaying voters, why? On this week’s edition of The Breakdown, Stanford political science professor Shanto Iyengar joins The Nation‘s DC editor Chris Hayes to figure out whether negative ads ever have positive effects.

 

Related Links

Matt Lauer asking Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown to just get along. A round-up of the worst negative campaign ads from this year’s primaries. More information about guest Shanto Iyengar.

Subscribe to The Breakdown on iTunes to listen to fresh takes on the confusing concepts that make politics, economics and government tick. A new episode every week!

Chris HayesTwitterChris Hayes is the Editor-at-Large of The Nation and host of “All In with Chris Hayes” on MSNBC.


Latest from the nation