Report: 2016 political ads have been mostly positive

Bloomberg News (TNS)

WASHINGTON

Although the front-runner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination has taunted his opponents as “disgusting,” “dumb” and “losers,” the overall campaign has, by at least one measure, been positive.

Almost 84 percent of the more than 66,000 ads that candidates and outside spending groups have aired to this point have been positive, according to a report from the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political ads at the Middletown, Conn., university.

Most ads airing from Jan. 1 to Dec. 9 “promoted a candidate as opposed to attacking a candidate or comparing one candidate against others.”

The report found that less than 3 percent of the ads were negative. Thirteen percent mentioned both the favored and opposed candidate.

“In this race as it stands right now, at least on the Republican side, it’s all moving targets,” said Michael Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project. “In November or early December, there’s no clear sense of who you want to undermine.”

The one exception has been Donald Trump, but negative ads by super-PACs opposing him have so far failed to curtail his momentum in states such as New Hampshire.

A number of candidates, including retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina, have risen to prominent polling positions behind Trump. But in the months reflected in the survey, “no one was really standing out” long enough for other candidates to identify them as targets, develop messages to oppose them, and produce and air ads.

Instead, super-PACs and outside groups, which the report found bought the majority of the ads in 2015, have focused on “boosting and promoting” their candidates, or concentrating on biographical details to introduce those who are lesser known to voters.

About half of the ads aired by Democratic groups have been negative, but they accounted for less than 1 percent of ads overall, so it’s hard to know what’s driving them, Franz said. Trump also has aired several negative, self-produced ads on social media, but they weren’t included in the survey.