Negative Advertising During Mexico’s 2012 Presidential Campaign

We construct a unique dataset that includes the total number of ads placed by all competing political parties during Mexico’s 2012 presidential campaign, and detailed information on the content of the ads aired every day during the course of the campaign by each of the competing parties. To illustrate its potential usefulness, we describe the evolution each party’s negative advertising strategies (defined as ads that explicitly mention each of the other competing candidates or parties) over the course of the campaign, and relate it to the expected vote share in the general election for each of the competing candidates based on the available surveys. We show that parties’ choice of negative advertising strategies are consistent with a model in which ads do affect voting intentions, and negative (positive) advertising affect negatively (positively) the vote share of the mentioned party, and positively (negatively) that of all other competing parties.