If you really want to make more people go to the polls on election day, put someone on the ballot a lot of people hate.

That’s because we are far more likely to turn out because we can’t stand someone than because we think one candidate is a really swell person.

That’s one of the conclusions of an ambitious study of voter attitudes spanning a 24-year period led by Jon A. Krosnick, professor of psychology and political science at Ohio State University.

Reacting to the Bad Guy

“People are more motivated by the threat of something bad than the opportunity for something good,” says Krosnick

Krosnick argues that during televised debates, although voters are listening to the candidates, other factors can have as much, if not more, impact on voters’ decisions. For example, he and colleagues found that in the 2008 US presidential election, many voters were more influenced by the ethnicity of the candidates – Barack Obama and John McCain – than they may have realised themselves. People with higher scores of implicit racial prejudice – which is unconsciously-held – were less likely to vote for Obama

Mud-Slinging Works

The research also suggests that a lot of campaign managers are right about one thing: Negative advertising really works, provided it’s done with enough taste to keep the mudslinger from getting a bit tarnished by his or her own mud. It takes a touch of class to sling mud effectively.

Decisions based on negative emotions can also work the other way. A growing body of evidence shows that voters unconsciously punish politicians when things don’t go their way – even issues entirely unconnected to politics.

Love/Hate at First Sight

That first meeting, incidentally, turns out to be very important down the road. First impressions really do matter most.

The study shows that if people liked, or disliked, the candidate at the first encounter, that opinion proved really hard to change later on. That suggests that current marketing strategies for candidates — saving the big bucks for the end of the campaign — is dead wrong.

In Kenya,this is true,we vote for our tribe based on the hate for the other candidate who comes from a different tribe.

If there will be a time where all presidential candidates will come from the same tribe,trust me, there will be very low vote turnout because there will be no one to hate/love

True I remember in 2002 a close friend told me that nomater the outcome his tribesmen will be in statehouse.... I wish we could vote on issues!