Attack Politics: Who Goes Negative and Why?

I introduce a formal model of campaign strategy to show when candidates will engage in negative campaigning and how it can affect election results. The model separates campaign strategies by target (self or opponent) and dimension (issue or character), and defines negative campaigning as attacking one's opponent on the character dimension. Whether candidates choose negative campaigning depends upon three factors: the preconceptions of the voter, the voter's preferred dimension, and the candidate types. I show that eliminating negative campaigning has an ambiguous effect on voter welfare. In some cases, eliminating the negative option can hurt superior candidates.