How Partisanship Matters: A Panel Study on the Democratic Outcomes of Perceived Dirty Campaigning

Uncivil campaigning and deceitful campaign techniques are increasingly relevant phenomena in politics. However, it remains unclear how they share an underlying component and how partisanship can influence their associations with democratic outcomes. We introduce the concept of dirty campaigning, which is situated at the intersection of research on negative campaigning and political scandals. Dirty campaigning involves violations of social norms and liberal-democratic values between elite political actors in terms of style and practices, such as uncivil campaigning and deceitful campaign techniques. In a two-wave panel study (N = 634) during the 2021 German federal election campaign, we investigate the associations of perceived dirty campaigning by the least and most favorite party with distrust in politicians, trust in democracy, attitudes toward dirty campaigning regulation, as well as perceived harmful consequences of dirty campaigning for democracy. We find that perceived dirty campaigning by the least favorite party increases perceptions of harmful consequences of dirty campaigning for democracy over time. In contrast, perceived dirty campaigning by the most favorite party decreases perceptions of harmful consequences of dirty campaigning for democracy as well as attitudes toward dirty campaigning regulation over time. Perceptions of harmful consequences of dirty campaigning for democracy increase distrust in politicians over time and vice versa. Our findings suggest that the outcomes of dirty campaigning can depend on partisanship and can have important implications for the quality of democracy.