Greetings,
Back before it adopted instant runoff voting, San Francisco had traditional runoff elections. The City's ethics commission found that independent expenditures quadrupled in runoff elections and generally were used for heavily negative ads In a runoff that only has two candidates, any vote lost by your opponent directly helps your side.
With the rise in independent expenditures in campaigns, I was wondering if anyone could alert me to resources and research on the character of ads generated by 527s and similar entities not directly associated with campaigns. I assume their ads are much more likely to target a candidate negatively than promote a candidate positively, and was wondering if this has been quantified.
Happy to take tips off-line.
Thank you,
Rob
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Rob Richie
Executive Director
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