A tale of two negative ads - Politics Live - News, commentary and analysis from The Globe and Mail's politics desk

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A tale of two negative ads

By Adam Radwanski

In my column today, I briefly touched on the effectiveness of the negative ad (“The Liberal record”) the Ontario NDP ran recently, relative to the one (“Doors”) the Progressive Conservatives have been running. Here, if you’ve not seen them, are the ads in question:

http://youtu.be/cwxILZEL02A

It’s worth explaining a little more how different the reactions were when Innovative Research Group put these ads to its online panel, as part of its continuing effort to help us see this campaign through the eyes of the electorate.

Unsurprisingly, both ads played well with self-identified supporters of the party that aired them. But whereas the NDP’s ad also played well with Tories, the Tories’ ad didn’t go over well with New Democrats.

Reaction to NDP ad ‘The Liberal Record’

SOURCE: Innovative Research Group

Reaction to Progressive Conservative ad ‘Doors’

SOURCE: Innovative Research Group

That difference admittedly doesn’t seem like much of a deal-breaker, especially considering the ads got about the same negative reaction from people who usually vote Liberal. But then, even people who find an ad negative might still be impacted by it in the way the party that aired it wants.

On that note, here’s how the different vote groups reacted when asked if they thought the ads were “credible”:

Perception of credibility for NDP ad ‘The Liberal Record’

SOURCE: Innovative Research Group

Perception of credibility for PC ad ‘Doors’

SOURCE: Innovative Research Group

Setting aside that New Democrats really don’t seem to trust the Tories even when they’re attacking the Liberals, what appears most relevant here is that even roughly half of Liberals who were shown the ad thought its criticism of their party of choice was valid. Considering that people who associate with a party tend to rally around it when it’s under attack, that’s surprising.

That doesn’t mean the NDP ad could persuade anywhere near that share of Liberal viewers to have second thoughts about voting Liberal. But it does appear capable of achieving more on that front than the Tories’ ad, while also dissuading more unaligned voters from casting their lot with Kathleen Wynne’s party. Here’s what respondents said when asked if the ads made them more or less likely to vote Liberal.

Reaction to Liberal Party after viewing the NDP ad ‘The Liberal Record’

SOURCE: Innovative Research Group

Reaction to Liberal Party after viewing the PC ad ‘Doors’

SOURCE: Innovative Research Group

All this is to say that, from what we can tell, the NDP is capable of doing more damage to the Liberals with negative advertising than the Tories are.

It’s also worth noting that if one party could maybe afford to pull its negative ads and let the other do its dirty work, it’s the Tories. That’s because while PC voters seem to respond equally well whatever party is telling them about the Liberals’ sins, New Democrats seem to be much more persuaded when they hear it from fellow travelers than from Tories.

A caveat here is that while 42% of respondents shown the PC ad said they had already seen it previously, only 20% expressed familiarity with the NDP one. As Innovative Research’s Greg Lyle points out, that could slightly distort the effectiveness, because an ad could be more impactful on first viewing than subsequently.

But it’s hard not to look at these numbers and come away with the sense that, heading into the campaign’s final leg, the Liberals have more to fear from NDP attacks than PC ones – especially if Andrea Horwath’s party is finally able to start matching the other parties in how much it spends to get its ads on the air.

(Responses to these two ads were drawn from a survey in which 1,200 eligible Ontario voters participated. Asked which party they usually support, 30 per cent of respondents said Liberal, 24 per cent Progressive Conservative, 16 per cent NDP, 5 per cent Green and 2 per cent other; 14 per cent said they don’t identify with any party and 10 per cent didn’t know. Each participant was shown one ad that has been aired by each party, meaning that sample sizes were smaller than 1,200 for each individual ad.

As parties get more sophisticated in targeting messages to individual voters, we want to get as many people as possible involved in helping us keep track of those messages and how they’re delivering them. If you’d be willing to help us tell the story of this campaign by keeping a campaign diary to let us know who contacted you and uploading campaign material, or maybe giving your reaction to ads, issues and events, you can sign up for the Listening Post Network here.)

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