Mudslinging on Twitter During the 2014 Election

Following the work of Evans, Cordova, and Sipole, we examine the way that candidates for congressional seats in 2014 used Twitter during the last 2 months of their campaign. Using a content analysis of every tweet sent by all candidates for both the US House and Senate, we show that particular individual-level and campaign-specific characteristics are related to whether and how often candidates go negative on Twitter. In particular, we show that there are differences based on competitiveness, incumbency, gender, and partisanship.

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