Negative campaigning as a chasing and mobilizing strategy. Lessons from the Swiss case

In this Paper I challenge the dominant understanding of negative campaigning, which originates from studies on two-party systems. Based on the insights from election campaigns in multiparty systems I argue for a new theorization of negative campaigning. Rather than seeing negative campaigning, defined as any criticism parties voice against their opponents, exclusively as a tool for chasing other parties' voters, this Paper emphasizes that it can be used for chasing as well as mobilizing purposes. I complement the theoretical discussion with a study on the 20111 and 2015 Swiss National Council elections. Why do parties emply negative campaigning? The common answer is that parties aim to chase undecided voters by discrediting their direct opponents. This Paper argues that this "chasing strategy" is only one part of the reason why parties employ negative campaigning and that parties also use negative appeals as a second "mobilizing strategy", which aims to mobilize their base by presenting the opponent as a threat. In multiparty systems, according to the dominant chasing paradigm, parties are expected to only have an interest in attacking opponents with whom they are competing for voters. However, the few empirical tests can doubt on that expectation, with some studies even suggesting that parties mainly attack ideological distant parties, which have a less than promising voter base. In a mobilizing perspective, attacking ideological distant parties makes sense, because it allows the attacker to mobilize its own potential electorate by attacking a disliked opponent whose ideas and interests supposedly threaten those held dear by the party and its potential electorate. In Switzerland for example, using a mobilizing strategy, the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) can be expected to attack the Social Democratic Party of Switerzland (SP) so that it can present itself as the party protecting people from state interventions embraced by the SP. In this logic of mobilization, the main targets of negative campaigning are opponents against whom parties can best rally their potential supporters. Negative campaigning is therefore not only a tool for chasing other parties' voters, but also an instruments for mobilization. I test the outlined argument with a study on the 2011 and 2015 Swiss National Council elections. The data used for the analysis consists in party advertisements published in newspapers as well as press releases and newspaper articles. The data will be analyzed with the help of a relational content analysis based on the core sentence approach.