Positive and Negative Campaigns in Primary and General Elections

We analyze positive and negative campaigning in primary and general elections. Positive campaigning builds a candidate’s reputation, while negative campaigning damages a rival’s. We provide explanations for why general campaigns are more negative: in the general election, winning primary candidates benefit only from positive primary campaigning; and negative campaigning by a primary loser impairs his intra-party rival’s chances. We derive how the relative strengths of candidates interact with the campaigning technology to affect the composition of campaigns. In a primary contest between a strong and weak challenger, the strong challenger’s campaign is largely negative, while his weak opponent’s is largely positive. In contrast, if challengers are similar, improving one challenger’s reputation causes his primary rival to campaign more aggressively, but the effect on the better challenger’s own primary campaigning hinges on the strength of the general election opponent. ∗Email: [email protected]; Address: Department of Economics, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL 61820, USA and the Department of Economics, The University of Warwick, Coventry CV47AL, UK. †Email: [email protected]; Address: Department of Economics, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL 61820.