Political Knowledge and Sponsorship in Backlash from Party‐ and Candidate‐sponsored Attacks

Apparently wary of backlash, candidates are sponsoring fewer negative ads while their party’s national committees do more of the dirty work. In this experiment (N = 107), contrary to expectations, candidate evaluations were more positive when participants saw the candidates’ own attacks than when they saw party‐sponsored attacks. An interaction showed that this was true particularly for viewers higher in political knowledge in their overall candidate evaluations. The recent embrace of ‘plain‐spoken’ candidates is mentioned as a possible explanation. Implications of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in light of this study are discussed.