18
dissatisfied with a specific campaign or with campaigns overall. Political involvement thus appears to work in
opposite directions.
One potential resolution to this tension is as follows. Perhaps the relationship between views of
negative campaigning and satisfaction with campaigns is actually mediated by political involvement. In
particular, it may be that this relationship is strongest among those low in involvement, but weakest among
those high in involvement because political sophisticates are more accepting of negative campaigning for the
reasons specified earlier (e.g., they perceive it as potentially providing a practical précis of politicians).
[insert Table 6 about here]
Table 6 reports how levels of campaign satisfaction vary with support for or opposition to criticism,
further breaking down that relationship by different measures of political involvement.
21
If the hypothesis
stated above were true, we should see a declining relationship as political involvement rises. In general, that is
not consistently true. In some cases, political involvement weakens the relationship—e.g., the effect of views
of negative campaigning declines among those with post-graduate education relative to those with only some
high school education—but this decline is not monotonic across all categories. Similar complexities emerge
when political information and interest are employed. At times, higher levels of information or interest do
not appear to have their hypothesized effect at all, and when they do, that effect is not monotonic.
Thus, we are still left puzzling over this paradox: though the politically involved are more likely to
sanction criticism in campaigns, they are by far the most dissatisfied with campaigns. It may be that the
dissatisfaction of political sophisticates derives from other sources, such as a lack of emphasis on “the issues”
or the perceived dominance of special interests and money in campaigns. Since negativity seems to dominate
modern campaigns, especially those addressed here, it would be especially significant if these other aspects of
the campaign were more responsible for voter dissatisfaction.
VII. Conclusion
Having examined different kinds of data, both quantitative and qualitative, from two California
gubernatorial campaigns, we find considerable evidence that how politicians campaign does not necessarily
determine how voters perceive them. In terms of the three-step model proposed at the outset, we find that
voters do not always seem to recognize negative campaigning when it occurs. Second, we find that they do
not necessarily consider negative campaigning exclusively uninformative or unhelpful. There is furthermore
variation within the public in how they feel about negative campaigning, with the politically sophisticated
more likely to see its potential merits. Third, we find no necessary link between attitudes towards negative
campaigning and satisfaction with candidates or with campaigns. While political sophisticates are more
21
When looking at satisfaction with candidates, we employ the measure of support for criticism that references Davis
and Simon, since only this version of that question has any empirical traction (see Table 5). When looking at satisfaction
with California campaigns, we employ the omnibus measure that combines both versions, since each version has a
similar impact (again, see Table 5).
Convention