Countering Negative Partisanship
People Today Don't Vote For What They Want; They Vote Against What They Don't Want
Ever since the 1990s, particularly coinciding with the rise of AM Conservative Talk Radio, the Republican Party has been defined as being the “anti-liberal” party. I mean that in the sense that little new agenda items and issues are openly advocated, they just point at the Democrats and say “You don’t want to vote for THEM, do you?” This also coincided with the exponential rise of negative campaign ads, particularly in the last months of a campaign, which smeared the Democrats awfully, but were extremely effective. Democrats always seemed a little off by the attacks.
It makes complete logical sense then that most voters decide who they want to vote for based on what they DON’T want to happen or see. It’s also actually pretty basic. Ever feel hungry, go to the fridge and say “I’m not in the mood for any of that” and then close the fridge without eating? It’s easier to make the case NOT to do something than it is to find something to solve the problem. Americans love their freedom of choice until, well, they have to actually MAKE the choice. Then, narrowing down the options becomes more difficult and off-putting. When it comes to elections, narrowing down the field inherently means limiting options. In that sense, it’s easy for a competitor to point at what was left behind and appeal to those left on the outside after the field was whittled down. That’s what negative campaigning is so effective at— targeting the people on the fringes, outside of the chosen, and turning them against the other side.
That means particular attention has to be given to not providing opponents reasons to vote against you.
Negative campaign ads are nothing new. Probably the most famous early attack ad was this LBJ “Daisy” ad warning of nuclear war if you elected Barry Goldwater, despite the fact that Goldwater’s name never is uttered or appears in the ad.
By the ‘80s though, they had it down to a science. Find out what worried people in the middle of the electorate, and tell them the other side was going to CAUSE that problem if they were elected. This 1988 George H.W. Bush ad, the famous “Willie Horton” ad, did just that, screaming crime would run rampant if you elected Dukakis, just as it had in Massachusetts where he was governor.
And every election since then has been a non-stop barrage of negative campaigning. Most political operatives will tell you that the goal of negative ads aren’t to boost your party’s numbers but to depress your opponents. Yeah, that’s hogwash. While they can depress numbers for the receiving end of a good barb, the goal is to develop a tribal mentality where what your side is right and the other side is antithetical to all that is good in the universe; that there are severe consequences if the other side wins. That’s why these attachments within MAGA and within the various interest group bases of the Dem party are so strong. This level of allegiance is designed to build a cult (hence the phrase, “Cult of Personality”). It turns out, getting groups to turn on one another is a powerful motivator to get people voting.
Some of the more hyperbolic aspects of more modern negative ads are outrageous and you eyeroll right past them, but the most effective ones are impactful in defining the other side, and making you utterly averse to them. That’s why the “They/Them” ad in 2024 was so effective; it took Harris’s and the Democrat’s basic positions and what they defended for the past 8 years and turned it on it’s head. The fact that the most outrageous images from this ad are in fact true and follows from Democratic positioning makes it even more damaging.
Which brings us to where Democrats are today. Trying to climb out of the wreckage that was the 2024 Presidential Election, they seem lost as far as direction, platform and ideas. The Catalist Data that came out last week basically shone a big, bright spotlight on how they have utterly lost the working class in this country to which I would say “Duh.” I mean, watch that ad above again and ask yourself if working class people would want to be a part of that. Nonetheless, the Democrats don’t know what to DO about it. When faced with an attack ad as damning as that one, their instincts are to ACCEPT the preface of the ad and call it “homophobic” or “transphobic” or “lacking empathy” and try to label listeners sympathetic to the GOP argument here as the same. That’s not how you win over voters or adapt to an effective attack. Over the past 10 years, the GOP has been able to do this not just with the transgender issue mentioned in the ad, but in courting men (“sexist!” Democrats would exclaim!), racial issues (“racist!”) and immigrants (“xenophobic!”). The end result is that Democrats are perceived as inflexibly rigid on all of these issues, that minor slights can be treated as huge infractions and offensive. That turned away the bulk of otherwise Dem leaning voters and has left the party without a way to get them back. To be sure, this is not all of the party doing this, but their activists and pundit class are all too quick to take the bait and push back in these ways.
Swing voters are not immune from negative partisanship in the other direction either. Democrats’ best messaging right now is not in favor of anything they believe or plan on doing, but rather on pointing at Trump and saying “He’s f**king everything up!” People all across America can see the irrationality, the impulsiveness and the ridiculousness and tend to agree. They certainly didn’t like Elon Musk, and as Trump seems more and more deranged they’re starting to compare him to the same elderly mental defects that led Biden to quit his campaign. Sooner or later Democrats will have to come up with a positive agenda and message, but so long as Trump is unifying the party and enraging most of the country for them, that can wait.
But the bigger question is how do Dems particularly combat the Negative Partisanship that is so strong against them? You know those sentiments have seeped in and are now accepted by the body politic, and that when September 2026 rolls around America will all be bombarded over the following 8 weeks with attack ads. How do Dems COUNTER that? In discussing this issue with various political consultants over the years (and two more recently that I know), here is their insight:
Keep the issues you want to focus on to just 3-4 big bullet point items. No grand changes, no big sweeping reforms (unless of course those reforms are one sentence simplistic and politically very popular). The fewer issues at stake, and the more time spent focusing on those, the less ammunition you provide the opponents. When the negative ads start coming, they will seem more abstract and out of left field than if you had been mentioning the issue consistently.
Move as fast and as far away from whatever the negative issues were from the previous election. You NEED to turn the page. Admit the mistakes and move on. The more you ignore doing this, the longer those items will continue to stick. Worse yet, the more your opponents will know you have no answer for them, and you can expect another barrage once the election rolls around.1
Do NOT ever ignore negative ads or brush them off. They’re being offered for a reason, particularly on an issue they think you are weak on. Bolster up your bona fides on the issue, either by demonstrating how false the ads are or by supporting your position. “Pivot” ads, where you take the crux of what is being offered in a negative light and pivot towards a more positive perspective of it almost always dull the impact of the attacks if they demonstrate a level of genuineness.
Project a happy, fun, positive dynamic as much as possible, both before and after the ads come. People prefer positive messaging to negative ones, and the more fun you can project and the more attraction to your positive qualities you can generate, the less those negative messages can impact you when they start flying around. In fact, many would prefer to DEFEND you in those circumstances.
Laugh it off. Most negative campaign ads and appeals to negative partisanship are so hyperbolic so as to laughably NOT be grounded in fact.2 Truth often gets stretched in these ads to their bare limits. Countering such an ad with laughter, mockery and ridicule in how wrong they were is an effective counter and creates a permission structure for others to dismiss them as well. Without fail, the best ads—even more effective than negative ads— are humorous ones.
The first most immediate response is usually to smear the FUNDERS of the ads. It’s dumb. It’s what makes George Soros and the Koch Brothers such famous partisan boogeymen. These appeals rarely work with the swing voters you need, since they don’t know and could care less who those people are. What these appeals do is keep your base voters in line and not considering abandoning you.3 These kinds of defenses only INCREASE negative partisanship.
Unleash the hounds. Once the first attack ad flies (usually from the person behind against the one leading), it’s gloves off. Pummel them relentlessly. The most “sticky” messaging (whether by content or repetition) often wins. Turn your opponent into a bigger devil than they are making you out to be. [This isn’t a counter to negative partisanship; it’s more of a doubling down on it. Nonethless, my political consultant friend wanted it included].
Pound the pavement; early and often. The single biggest indicator of whether someone will vote for a candidate is if they had met them personally. The more the candidate gets out there meeting people, early and often, the more negative attacks will fall on deaf ears. The single best defense to all negative partisanship is when someone else says “I KNOW Candidate X, and that’s just not true.”
Will many of these suggestions help? Maybe. We live in a climate which is much more tribal and much more provocative and antagonistic. Many of these suggestions seek to poke holes in those facades and barriers that keep us apart, which is a good and healthy thing and something we need to desperately get back to. Alas, I suspect the one that people will get the most use out of though is to double down, amplify and pummel us with yet more negative campaigning, leading only further to even more polarizing negative partisanship.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
You would think that the most hated person in the world would be some despot dictator or a mass murderer of some kind. Perhaps Putin who has waged a war upending most of Europe and the world. or Kim Jong Un who represses his people horribly.
But no, the two people who most often have appeared at the top of most hated people in the world polls globally since the start of 2025? Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject
Negative Partisanship forces us to repel one another like magnets with the same poles facing each other; we need to fix this and get back to the magnetic attraction that makes us so powerful. When the American public is aligned in what we want to do, the electromagnetic current that flows through the body politic is one of the strongest forces society can witness.
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Footnotes and Fun Stuff
One of my political campaign friends who I consulted for this piece offered that this is the Democrats’ biggest issue right now; the fact that they HAVEN’T disowned what went wrong in 2024 and turned the page yet. It just shows they don’t know their way out of this mess and don’t have a plan for a winning coalition yet at all.
That’s another reason the “They/Them” ad was so powerful; it WAS grounded in fact, and evidenced throughout the ad by the photos and videos of Harris defending the position.
A friend of mine who works for a polling company once told me one of the screens they use to determine how partisan a potential focus group member may be was to ask them if they knew who George Soros and the Koch Family were, and their thoughts on each. The best candidates for a swing voter focus group were almost always people who didn’t know who either were.
As a Liberal and not a Progressive, I’m often frustrated at the way Ds, their interest groups, and their commentators take the most politically toxic positions in a way that is simply meant to signal their moral enlightenment and superiority. However, I think that those Ds are really stuck between a rock and a hard place in a way the Rs are not. As the maybe apocryphal quote from the 1984 Reagan campaign goes in regards to upset members of the Christian conservative movement, “what the fuck are they going to do, vote for Mondale?” The problem is that far left Ds WILL vote for third parties or stay home in order to teach Ds a lesson. So how are they supposed to take rational positions when there is very high risk of alienating the far left, but reliable voters, and shaky high risk that doing so will attract middle of the road or non-voters?
"this is not all of the party doing this, but their activists and pundit class are all too quick to take the bait and push back in these ways."
Good point...Several Democrats in Congress have been explaining, over the past several months, that they were able to win their states and districts by distancing their respective campaigns from the pundits popular on cable news who are incentivized to elicit emotional reaction by participating in the latest culture war.
From what I've read, the successful candidates focused their message on local issues and kept the canned talking points to a minimum.