Negative Campaigning in Europe

Election campaigns are a vital tool for political parties to inform voters about their policy positions, convince them to vote for their party or candidates, and mobilize individuals to turn out and participate in elections. However, while the central element in parties' and politicians' election campaign messages is to highlight their accomplishments and policy standings, research indicates they also use election campaigns to inform voters about their competitors, mainly through what we call "negative campaigning". Through these negative campaigns, parties and politicians aim to highlight their rivals' policy positions that go against their own policy offerings, their incompetencies, character deficits, internal divisions, lacking integrity, and dishonesty. Based on an original, award-winning dataset, the Comparative Campaign Dynamics (CCD) Dataset, the contributions in this volume analyse three core areas; when and why political parties and politicians engage in negative campaigning, how the media portrays this form of campaigning, and what the electoral, behavioural, and attitudinal consequences of negative campaigning are. Through this comparative focus, the Editors Marc Debus, Zeynep Somer-Topcu, and their contributors present a more generalizable pattern to explain why political parties use negative campaigning, how this rhetoric is covered in the media, and where we can see some of these consequences of negative campaigning across Europe, providing readers with an in-depth insight into the nature of electoral campaigns and their broader impact on voter attitudes and political developments.