Candidate Strategies in the Presidential Nomination Campaign

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This article examines the situations under which candidates in multicandidate races go on the attack (both intraparty and interparty), paying special attention to the timing of the attacks, whether the attacker or the attacked is a front-runner or trailing, and candidate ideology. Using ad tracking data from the 2004 and 2008 U.S. presidential nomination campaigns and detailed polling data from each state, the authors find that timing is an important consideration in launching an attack and that candidate ideology determines who gets attacked. While candidate standing and candidate resources have little influence on intraparty attack behavior, both are important predictors of attacks across party lines. Political scientists have learned much in the past decade about presidential cam paigns and their strategic use of political advertising—especially the decision to go negative. This research, however, generally has not extended to the nomination season, when the strategic environment is much different than that of the general election. After all, nominations generally feature a half dozen or more competing candidates, voting that takes place sequentially, considerable variation in voter knowledge across candidates, and generally low levels of voter knowledge (at least when contrasted with the general election). What circumstances, then, drive nomination candidates to air negative adver tising? Are candidates more likely to do so when they are leading or trailing? At which opponent(s) are such ads aimed? And at what point in the nomination season does