Negative campaigning can provide voters with valuable information about why opposing candidates should not be elected. Yet voters are usually confronted with a mixture of both positive and negative information, which can be challenging for voters to interpret whenever two opponents' statements directly conflict. We conduct a dynamic process tracing-based experiment to simulate a campaign environment in which voters receive conflicting positive and negative messages. In these situations, the voter may assume that one or both candidates are being dishonest or disingenuous. Presented with multiple campaign statements simultaneously, our research participants can opt to receive additional information about any of the messages, and in some cases may subsequently request an independent fact-check of a single message. Using dynamic processing tracing, we examine to what extent voters seek information about the positive campaign or the negative campaign in these situations—”or alternatively, whether they tend ignore such conflicts and focus on other campaign issues. This study will help to explain how different candidate strategies can lead to different voter search methods.
