Campaign season has arrived with its usual barrage of attack ads, and this cycle is no exception.
Polls consistently show voters say they dislike negative advertising, yet campaigns across the country keep pouring money into it.
Political scientists, strategists and marketing experts say the answer lies in a mix of high stakes, economic anxiety, simple human psychology, and now, artificial intelligence.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted after the 2024 election found that 74 percent of voters said the campaign was “too negative,” a figure that held steady from a nearly identical result in an October pre-election survey.
Travis Ridout, a political science professor at Washington State University and codirector of the Wesleyan Media Project—which tracks political advertising nationwide—said he was struck this cycle by how much of the earliest negativity came from intra-party primary fights….