Rogowski (2014) adopts survey data collected by Project Vote Smart that administer surveys to candidates for president, House and Senate, governor, and state legislatures. Candidates are asked about their political position on various issues, and thus their answers are deemed as indicators of two parties’ ideological platforms. In the analysis of House and Senate elections, Rogowski finds the negative effect of candidates’ ideological gap on voter turnout in a given district. The larger the ideological gap between candidates, the lower the voter turnout, according to his analysis. His conclusion is different from Hetherington and Abramowitz’s arguments introduced above. As Rogowski controls confounding factors, he is at a better position to supporting his argument. However, the candidates’ ideological divergence in his study cannot ignore the endogenous relationship between ideological divergence and turnout in a given district. That is, in an electoral area where many voters generally abstain from voting, candidates could make efforts to stimulate turnout by intentionally showing clear differences of their ideological positions so that they can garner support from their target electorate. This potential endogeneity problem makes it unclear whether ideological polarization actually negatively influences …show more content…
This line of argument notices the similarity between negative campaign and party polarization, both of which highlight distinct policy platforms among candidates or parties. However, the research on negative campaigning has also produced conflicting results with respect to its effect on political polarization. On one hand, Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995) suggest that negative campaigning disengages the electorate, particularly independents, by keeping them from having a positive view on politics . Following their research, other studies have presented similar views on the effects of negative campaigning on voter participation (e.g., Brooks 2000). On the other hand, many posit that negative campaign actually boost voter turnout, even among those who are dismayed by politics. Wattenberg and Brians (1999) find affluent information about candidates’ ideological or issue positions in negative advertising enhances better acquirement of political knowledge and in turn boosts higher voter