We investigate the strategic components of the decision to "go negative" in Swiss elections, by looking at the interplay between the competitive positioning of actors and the time left in the campaign; following the literature, we could expect that political actors facing electoral failure are more likely to go negative on their opponents when the election day draws near. The interplay between these two mechanisms has received scant attention. We test our expectations on a rich dataset of 3000 ads published in Swiss newspaper during the 2003, 2007 and 2011 electoral campaigns. Our analyses show that if the prospect of electoral failure plays as a strong incentive for negative campaigning, this does not happen more likely when the election is closer, quite the opposite. We show furthermore than a substantial difference exists between person- and issue-based attacks when looking at the causal mechanisms leading to the use of negative campaigning.
