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CRRC-Georgia examines how effective negative campaign tactics and contact with voters is for political parties in Georgia.

On Wednesday, Georgians head to the polls in the country’s first ever pres­i­den­tial run-off and last ever direct pres­i­den­tial election.  The elections are taking place on an uneven playing field, with the head of the Georgian Dream party’s char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion promising to write off the debt of over 600,000 people, roughly one in six eligible voters, after the elections. In addition, the number of eligible voters increased by nearly 10,000 in the period between the first and second round, an anomalous increase.

Besides these issues with fair com­pe­ti­tion, inter­na­tion­al observers have decried the negative tone of cam­paign­ing.  At the same time and despite the uneven playing field, the can­di­dates have been stumping through­out the country. While the negative cam­paign­ing is decried and the voter-party contact is generally viewed as positive, what these campaign tech­niques have in common is that they likely work.

In the first round of elections, Salome Zura­bishvili, an inde­pen­dent candidate endorsed by the ruling Georgian Dream party (GD), received about 615,000 votes — a drop of a quarter of a million votes from what the Georgian Dream garnered in the 2016 par­lia­men­tary elections.

Grigol Vashadze, the oppo­si­tion candidate supported by the United National Movement (UNM) and other smaller oppo­si­tion parties, garnered about 600,000 votes. This exceeded the UNM’s 2016 vote count by 125,000 votes. Impor­tant­ly, this increased vote share comes following a major party split in the wake of the 2016 elections, which lead to the estab­lish­ment of European Georgia, the party who finished in third place in the first round of voting with about 11% of the vote.

The results caught the Georgian Dream lead­er­ship by surprise, which imme­di­ate­ly gathered and discussed a new campaign strategy for the runoff elections. Negative cam­paign­ing has been integral to the strategy.

Going Negative

To be sure, both GD and the UNM chose to simply be rather than ‘go’ negative in the first round. As the OSCE/ODHIR election obser­va­tion mission stated, ‘The campaign was dominated by con­tro­ver­sial topics polar­is­ing public opinion, negative cam­paign­ing and harsh accu­sa­tions between GD and UNM’.

For the second round, GD launched a new attack, including dozens of videos and bill­boards aimed at arousing negative feelings towards the UNM. The UNM is also engaged in negative cam­paign­ing against GD and its leader, Bidzina Ivan­ishvili, through extensive negative coverage on the TV channel Rustavi 2.

It remains to be seen how either party’s strategy will work, but a survey CRRC Georgia carried out for the National Demo­c­ra­t­ic Institute that inter­viewed approx­i­mate­ly 1,200 respon­dents before and after the 2016 elections suggests that voter contact is likely to increase support for both the incumbent and the oppo­si­tion. However, negative cam­paign­ing appears to only benefit the oppo­si­tion.

During 2016 par­lia­men­tary elections, party-voter contact was ben­e­fi­cial for the ruling party and the UNM: a voter that was contacted during the election campaign was 11 per­cent­age points more likely to be a ruling party supporter after the elections than someone who was not contacted. Contact increased the prob­a­bil­i­ty of sup­port­ing the UNM by five per­cent­age points, but produced no results for smaller oppo­si­tion parties.

Negative cam­paign­ing also appears to increase party support, assuming that negative cam­paign­ing leads to disliking a par­tic­u­lar party or parties. If a voter had a negative attitude towards any party prior to the election in 2016, they were seven per­cent­age points more likely to support the UNM and five per­cent­age points more likely to support another oppo­si­tion party.

This data suggests that if negative cam­paign­ing works — that is it makes people more negative towards the opposing party — then it can turn into votes, at least for the oppo­si­tion.

While party-voter contact benefits both the main players and negative attitudes towards parties benefit only the oppo­si­tion, what do these campaign tech­niques do in com­bi­na­tion?

The data suggest that contact was ben­e­fi­cial for the ruling party whether the person was negative or not towards parties. In contrast, the UNM gained support from contact when the voter that was contacted had negative attitudes towards parties prior to the elections.

Readers should be cautious to project findings from the 2016 surveys to 2018. If the findings do hold for 2018 though, they signal a con­tro­ver­sy-filled future for political com­pe­ti­tion in Georgia.

Oppo­si­tion parties have a clear incentive to go negative; indeed their outreach efforts only appear to work when voters are negative towards parties. Even though the oppo­si­tion appears to be the winner from neg­a­tiv­i­ty, once one side engages in negative cam­paign­ing, it will be hard to prevent a bandwagon effect.

On a positive note, party-voter contact matters, and for the ruling party it matters whether or not the voter is positive or negative. This provides a strong incentive, at least before elections, for parties to be in touch with their con­stituents, a net positive for Georgia’s democracy.

Koba Tur­manidze is the Director of CRRC-Georgia.