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Title	A Strange Duality: The Benefit of Independence and Importance of Partisanship in the Source of Political Advertisements
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Type	Thesis
Length	138 Pages
Area	Government
Advisor	Deborah Brooks, Joseph Bafumi
Composed	2007
Summary	The rise of 527 organizations and the use of candidate disclaimers in political advertisements have been two of the most visible developments in recent American campaigns. Both of these developments were influenced directly or indirectly by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, with the 2004 Election being the first time they were major factors in electoral politics. This thesis examines these two phenomena through a controlled experiment by varying the source attribution of a campaign advertisement. The results showed that 527 organizations are more effective sources of negative advertisements than candidates, and that candidates experienced a backlash as a result of sponsoring a negative advertisement. Additionally, the experiment finds that partisanship serves an important role in shaping the effects of source attribution. From these results, the project examines the future of 527s and candidate disclaimers and their impact on American politics.