When to Attack

While the study of the use of negative campaign tactics has been a prolific topic of scholarship, previous studies have been limited in their ability to test the dynamics of negativity over the course of the campaign because their analysis of content from political campaigns is either static in nature or limited in its scope. Although we know that the closeness of the race, the status of the candidate as an incumbent or a challenger, and other characteristics affect the volume of negativity over the entire campaign, we know little about how these factors affect when candidates choose to go negative. Using a unique data set of over 1,400 emails sent out by campaigns from a random sample of congressional districts in 2012, we examine negativity over the course of the campaign. We find that the dynamics of negativity vary by whether there is an incumbent in the race.