With just over one month to go until election day, it's fair to say the two front runners in a Minnesota Senate race have taken the gloves off.
Negative advertisements are blanketing the airwaves between U.S. Senator Norm Coleman and Al Franken.
For years experts have said negative ads disgust the voters so that begs the question, why do them?
Political analyst David Schultz says there are two major reasons.
"You get your base excited by demonizing the other side," Schultz said.
"Iit has the biggest impact on the swing voter. We have evidence to suggest negative ads depresses voter turnout by 3-5 percent and most of that is in the middle."
The ads, Schultz says get the swing voter not to vote in most cases.
But, what it also could do is get that swing voter to say no to both Coleman and Franken and go to the independent candidate, Dean Barkley.
"Here you have Dean Barkley benefitting by these two beating each other up and he doesn't go negative, he takes the high road approach," Schultz said.
So, what, if anything could Coleman and Franken do?
Schultz says one of them, should stop the negative advertising and take a chance on going positive.
"If one candidate comes out in a commercial and says that's it I'm done with negative ads and for the rest of this I go positive, I think that candidate wins," Schultz said.
(Copyright 2008 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
