Skip to main content Skip to navigation
CAS in the Media Arts and Sciences Media Headlines

Outside groups behind negative ad influx

Polls of Ohio residents found an overwhelming disgust this election season over negative campaigning.

Travis Ridout
Travis Ridout

Negativity in moderation in fact can be useful, said Travis Ridout, WSU professor of political science and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which has tracked advertising in federal elections since 2010. “It helps voters draw a contrast between candidates. [But] for other people,” he said, “it can be demobilizing.”

Ridout, whose courses at WSU cover the use of media in political campaigns, said the crush of attack ads from outside groups forces candidates to fire back or risk losing ground. “You’re kind of in a vicious cycle of attack, attack, attack, which makes it even more negative,” he said.

Find out more

WHIO

Why Clinton Is Hitting Trump on Outsourcing

It’s about something bigger than white working-class votes.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has chosen a central line of attack for its commercials, recently flooding the airwaves with ads focused on her opponent’s outsourcing jobs to overseas countries.

Travis Ridout
Travis Ridout

“Some people might say that Donald Trump is looking out for the average guy,” says Travis Ridout, a political science professor who studies campaign advertising at Washington State University. “These ads make you stop and think. Is that really the case?”

Find out more

New Republic

 

Washington voters pick candidates in dozens of primary races

Voters are weighing in on dozens of races across Washington on Tuesday as they winnow their choices for offices ranging from Congress to the Legislature in the state’s primary election.

Cornell Clayton
Cornell Clayton

The fact that of the nine statewide offices on the ballot, five have open seats—without an incumbent—injects a different dynamic into the election, said Cornell Clayton, a political science professor at Washington State University.

“You have so many more candidates from both parties than you would normally have,” he said. “When you have incumbents, it tends to dampen the competition.”

Find out more

The Lebanon Daily Record
KOMO News
The Columbian
Centralia Chronicle
Charlotte Observer
Peninsula Daily
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Bellingham Herald
News Tribune
Sun Herald
The Herald
Idaho Statesman
Star-Telegram
News Observer

Are Democratic lawmakers ‘jumping ship’ from Legislature?

Cornell Clayton
Cornell Clayton

Republicans might have followed Democrats to line up for statewide offices and Congress, too, if they had a shot at winning some of them, said Cornell Clayton, a political science professor at Washington State University.

Statewide elections already prove tough for Republicans to win… and divisive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump could increase statewide turnout even more than normal in Democrats’ favor, Clayton said.

“Republicans (in Washington) are going to be running in a headwind given who is running at the top of their ticket in the general election right now,” he said.

Find out more

Bernie’s Fundraising Was Revolutionary. How He Spent His Money Was Not.

Travis Ridout
Travis Ridout

Was the Sanders campaign wise to invest so much in advertising? Travis Ridout, a professor of government and public policy at WSU who studies political media, said that Sanders “is a candidate for whom advertising might have actually been effective, first for introducing himself to a lot of people, and also for political donors to see all those ads on the air. That lent him quite a bit of viability.”

What did $220 million buy? Ads, consultants, and a dispiritingly conventional campaign.

Find out more

Slate