• by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, June 3, 2016

Negativity has taken center stage this election cycle. Hatred, bigotry, dishonesty, chauvinism, racism -- just some of the terms commentators have discussed for months.

While many voters have been galvanized by deep opposition to both leading candidates from the rival parties, the cynical tone, pervasive throughout the primaries, may turn off a significant number of general election voters.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who made a point of not running any negative ads during his election campaigns, spoke with John Dickerson of “Face the Nation” about the effect media negativity  could have on voter turnout.

“The example I always use in business, companies that are arch-rivals, that hate each other, like “Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Coke doesn’t do attack ads against Pepsi because they’d work. Pepsi’s sales would go down. Pepsi would have no choice but to counterattack Coke. You depress sales in the entire product category of soft drinks,” says Hickenlooper.

Framed by this example, the Governor continued: “What we’re doing is we’re depressing the product category of democracy. And especially young people just tune out. We do that at our own peril. We let that happen at our own risk.”

A recent research report by the Ohio Media Project supports Gov. Hickenlooper’s view of negative advertising’s suppressive effect on voting.

Particularly addressing super PAC ads, the report explained that negative spots “are designed to suppress voter turnout as much as they are to persuade voters to support one candidate over another.”

The research showed that Independents were most susceptible to being swayed by negative advertising, adding that “especially with moderate voters, you get a demobilization effect, where they just kind of turn off:  ‘This is a nasty campaign, I just want to stay home.’”

Bad news for the Hillary Clinton campaign, not so bad for Donald Trump.

The Nation published a piece in early May titled “Voter Suppression Is The Only Way Donald Trump Can Win.” Ari Berman explained: “Unless there’s an unexpected turnaround in his terrible numbers among non-white and young voters, there’s only one way Trump can win the general election: by massively suppressing Democratic voters or hoping they don’t show up on Election Day.”