It just doesn’t sound right to me. There is a TV ad each day about 3pm on a Tampa station that raves on and on about how bad the one candidate is. I don’t recall if they ever tell me who to vote for. Is this good advertising to mention the bad guys name and not the good guys name?
In todays mail I got and 8X10 postcard. Rather attractive background. In big letters it says “Dean Heller is not our choice” in tiny print it says NevadaWomenVote.org.
Nowhere does it suggest who I should vote for.
Why waste the money?
Negative campaigning seems to work. But I think the problem you are asking about would occur if a candidate going negative is not well known. Negative campaigning tends to lower the turnout so if a candidate doesn’t make his own name and political position well known then attacking the other guy won’t help him win.
You want two separate ad campaigns. You want to keep your candidate completely isolated from the negative ads if possible. First, because you don’t want the negative impression you’re trying to create associated with your candidate. Second, you want to create the impression the negative information is neutral and unbiased and your candidate is a nice guy who isn’t involved in negative campaigning.
Then you run a completely separate series of ads that are all sunny and positive and only mention your candidate. You want to have flags and families and sunshine and fuzzy puppies in these ads. You want people to smile when they hear your candidate’s name.