why negative campaign ads work

[nemesiss]

i found this article which had some interesting text.
though i doubt it's offentivency, i wouldn't be surprised if it is true...

http://truth-2-power.com/2012/06/29/why-negative-political-attack-ads-work-5-in-10-americans-cant-read-8-in-10-cant-process/

some pieces from this article...

A majority of Americans form political opinions from ads in their entertainment programming. 51% of the adult population of the United States is barely functionally literate. 94% have varying degrees of difficulty "synthesizing" complicated concepts.

So only 2 in 10 Americans is truly literate enough to read and understand the nuances of political journalism. 51% of Americans have difficulty synthesizing the complex information that comes out of political news well enough to digest it.

One in three native-born citizens fail the civics portion of the naturalization test

 

[IBSpify]

Actually I feel that it's actually much simpler then that, people remember negative things more then they remember positive things, thus it's easier to make people not want to vote for your opponent, then it is to make people want to vote for you. And since we have a 2 party system, if you convince people not to vote for the other guy you become the default choice.

If we used a multi-party system where ultimately there were more then 2 choices we would see less negative adds, simply because you would need to convince people to vote for you, rather then just not vote for the other guy.

 

[Unwardil]

Trouble with a multi party system is that it really ends up being a De-facto 2 party system, generally between the most extreme right wing party and the centerist party and in that situation, the same logic applies. If you don't vote for us, you're helping the other major party. That's how it goes in canada anyway, although there are a few exceptions.

Won't work for me though, I refuse to vote for a party that doesn't have some kind of commitment to space exploration and colonization. If no party feels that's a relevant issue then no party gets my vote.

 

[Laurens]

Trouble with a multi party system is that it really ends up being a De-facto 2 party system, generally between the most extreme right wing party and the centerist party and in that situation, the same logic applies. If you don't vote for us, you're helping the other major party. That's how it goes in canada anyway, although there are a few exceptions.

Won't work for me though, I refuse to vote for a party that doesn't have some kind of commitment to space exploration and colonization. If no party feels that's a relevant issue then no party gets my vote.

Just out of curiosity, would you vote for a party that set forth commitment space exploration, but also say, denied the rights of homosexuals to get married?

 

[Unwardil]

Given that in canadian law, the courts have never ruled to deny those rights, I might. I'd feel icky about it, but then, even our conservatives aren't crazy enough to try it in this country. We don't have the same kind of right wing religious lobbyists here that make that kind of thing a possibility. Of course we have crazy right wing religious wackos, but they aren't organized like they are south of the border and with most of the voting population in ontario and quebec, you really can't get away with a socially right leaning policy. Not overtly any way. Stephen Harper had to swear up and down that he wasn't going to touch abortion or gay rights before people would even consider him electable.

But I guess your question is which do I feel is more valuable, space exploration or egalitarian basic human rights. Honestly, I'm more in favor of space exploration. You can't legislate tolerance to the intolerant. Being gay is like being any minority, there's always going to be people who are going to hate you for what you are. Hell, that can broadly be said about being human, it's just a little more pronounced if you're a more visible type of minority. Not being allowed to marry is tragic in a kind of general emotional kind of way. In the kind of way that matters very intensely to individuals and it definitely should not be allowed to happen just because you're gay.

The greater tragedy however, is that if we got hit with a meteorite tomorrow, the infrastructure for civilization to survive such a catastrophe is not in place and, as things stand, will never be in place. We're sitting on a time bomb of a planet that has radioactive decay detonator. It will go off, but who the hell knows when. The only ultimate solution to this problem is expanding into space. Then your worst case scenario becomes an awful lot less dire indeed. I want canada to be on the leading edge of that because honestly, we could be. I want the first self contained off world habitat to be built in the canadian arctic, I want our aerospace expertise designing newer and better rocket engines. These are the things we can do and we're not. We're not even interested. If a political party was interested, they'd get my vote.