DAVID ALWAYS BEATS GOLIATH:

Going Negative: When It Works (JIM RUTENBERG and KATE ZERNIKE, 8/22/04, NY Times)

Political consultants cite a strikingly consistent pattern when it comes to darker, more confrontational commercials. "Focus groups will tell you they hate negative ads and love positive ads," said Steve McMahon, a Democratic strategist. "But call them back four days later and the only thing they can remember are the negative ones."

And studies have shown that not only are people more likely to remember attacks, it also takes fewer airings to remember them.

"There appears to be something hard-wired into humans that gives special attention to negative information," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "I think it's evolutionary biology. It was the wariness of our ancestors that made them more likely to see the predator and hence to prepare. The one who was cautious about strange new food probably didn't eat it, they sat back and watched other people die. There's a reason to be hesitant about that which is vaguely menacing."

Negative ads also pay dividends beyond what campaigns actually spend on them by getting more attention in the news media. The debate about the Swift boat ad, which accused Mr. Kerry of lying to get his war medals, has played out for weeks on talk radio and cable news, meaning it was played over and over at no cost to the group running it.

A new study by Ms. Jamieson's group found that nearly half of 2,209 people surveyed nationally said they had seen or heard about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad, though it has only been shown in three states at modest levels. And a new CBS News poll shows that Mr. Kerry's support among veterans has slipped from 46 percent to 37 percent since Democrats' convention.

Studies and focus groups have shown that people like ads that are based on policy, factually accurate and that forecast how a candidate would govern, giving them a reason to vote for a candidate - as well as a reason to vote against the opponent.

"Unless people think it's untruthful, you're not going to get a backlash out of it," Ms. Jamieson said. "If people think the source is credible, that the source is speaking out of a deep conviction, you don't get a sense of attack."

The infamous Willie Horton ad, for example, which portrayed Michael Dukakis as weak on crime in 1988, was based in fact and policy - namely, that, while Mr. Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts, felons were let out of prison on weekend furloughs.

The reality that the Democrats are having trouble coming to grips with is that their barrage of negatives didn't hurt the President at all, while one shot has managed to tumble the Senator.

MORE:
Why 527 Is the Dems' Lucky Number: These fund-raising groups have discovered how to merge vast sums of money with political canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts (Paula Dwyer, July 28, 2004, Business Week)

One of the more interesting inventions of the 2003-04 election cycle is the so-called 527 organization, a shadow group that's both a tax-exempt political action committee and recipient of soft-money contributions. You know -- the groups that accept the multimillion-dollar checks from fat-cat donors that the official parties are barred from taking, under the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform law. The two largest 527s are called The Media Fund and America Coming Together [ACT], sister groups under a common fund-raising structure called the Joint Victory Committee.

So how successful have they been? Phenomenally so. Media Fund and ACT alone have raised $80 million to pay for a vast -- and very sophisticated -- voter-turnout effort, as well as to place ads in 15 to 17 battleground states. Officials from both organizations say they will have no trouble reaching their goal of $125 million by November. That would be as much as the Kerry campaign has raised so far, itself a record sum for a challenger. [...]

Pity the GOP. It spent months screaming that the liberal 527s were illegal. After all, they were accepting now-banned soft money to work toward the defeat of President Bush. How is it that McCain-Feingold didn't mean to include such electioneering under the reform umbrella? If the 527s mobilize voters, help get out the candidates' message on the issues, and raise the money to pay for it all, why aren't these functions -- message, mobilization, and money -- the same ones a political party performs?

Many people believe that they are, and that the 527s ought to be regulated alongside PACs and other party-building groups. But the timid Federal Election Commission has punted the issue of whether to regulate the 527s until after the election, leaving the GOP out in the cold for now. So the Republicans are trying to catch up. But with most corporations and chief execs skittish about getting back into the soft-money game, the conservative 527s have raised just $1 for every $4 raised by the Dems.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 21, 2004 3:41 PM