Love is blind. Partisanship and perception of negative campaign messages in a multiparty system

Abstract

We study how partisanship influences the perception of directed campaign statements of varying polarity and sentiment strength. Using a crowdsourced survey experiment with German participants, we find asymmetrical perceptual biases. Partisan respondents perceive negative campaigning from or about a party they favour, as less negative than non-partisans. The discounting effect applies particularly for voters with stronger preferences and for messages that are more strongly negative. Partisan preferences only weakly influence the perception of neutral or positive campaign statements. The discounting biases found for negative statements point at limits of negative campaigning effects in electoral contests. Different effects for weakly and strongly worded messages substantiate concerns that dichotomous approaches to negative campaigning could miss important variation in party communication and its effects.