Despite the traditional narrative, Congressional campaignsdon’t normally follow the trajectory of positive, negative,positive

A hallmark of contemporary political campaigns is that most will at some stage ‘go negative’, with attacks against the rival candidate. But what determines when candidates choose to go negative? In new research which looks at Congressional campaigning, Hans J.G. Hassell and Kelly R. Oeltjenbruns find that while candidates in open-seat races tend to begin positively, go negative, and then end positively, challengers and incumbents tend to start negative and more or less stay that way throughout the campaign.