PHOENIX — Campaign season has once again arrived in Arizona and you don't have to look any further than the ads on TV to see just how competitive the election is expected to be.
It can seem like every other ad is a negative campaign ad.
It seems that way because it's not far from the truth.
"Once that first negative ad has been launched, then it sort of becomes an all-out war," Samara Klar, a political science professor at the University of Arizona said.
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12News picked a random one-hour block of television and logged the ads in every commercial break.
We found out of 39 ads, 22 of them were not political ads, 14 of them were negative ads, which we classified as ads that criticize an opponent and only 3 of them were positive political ads.
But if negative is how everyone's going, it must work, right?
"It's a really hard question to answer," Klar said. "If you ask people do you like negative ads, they will say no."
However, Klar said, campaigns run negative ads for a reason. If they don't, their opponent might. And the tone of the ad can at least raise questions in voters' minds.
"We know that there are things that can be pretty effective," she said, "and one of those things is instilling fear or threat or anxiety in voters."
Which means dangerous-sounding music, dramatic voiceovers, the textbook definition of a negative ad.
Surveys have shown that people mostly don't consider themselves political, Klar explained. They dislike being identified with either main party, which is why Independent voter registration is up, Klar said. In Arizona, Independents are the second-largest group of registered voters.
But even with a growing dislike of political parties and being "political", the negative ads are still coming strong.
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