In a multiparty system governed by coalitions, negative campaigning seems to depend largely on coalition tactics. This conclusion arises in the present paper, which studies negative campaigning in a particular way. First, attacks in the media are studied in combination with their opposite, viz., statements of support among parties, which also occur in multiparty election campaigns. Second, single attacks and support statements published by the media during the campaign are analysed rather than overall negativity of the campaign. Thus it is possible to apply a dynamic network model that includes time-varying predictors such as polling results and the network structure of previous statements. Feedback effects of previous statements allow for nonlinear dynamics, which may result in path dependent trajectories and unexpected outcomes.
Hypotheses on the odds of support over attack derived from several theories are tested on the national election campaign in The Netherlands, 2006, using polling results and data from a content analysis of newspaper articles and TV news items. The preliminary results suggest that large and incumbent parties are more likely to be attacked although incumbent parties tend to support each other, which suggests that they defend the present coalition. Support and attack react to previous support/attack statements; parties show a tendency to form in line with coalition tactics. In addition, issue positions recently published in the media rather than ideological positions in pre-election party manifestoes predict support and attack. Finally, winning in the latest polls attracts more support and a party is also more likely to support another party if the polling results indicate that they would have a majority, possibly with a third coalition partner, provided that the parties have rather similar Left-Right positions.
