How Do Consumers React to Disloyalty Ads?

Spending on political campaigns has surged dramatically. This paper introduces and examines “disloyalty ads,” a novel type of political advertisement in which candidates explicitly criticize their own party. Given the importance of party loyalty in today’s world, disloyalty ads appear counterintuitive and potentially risky. Why would candidates air ads in which they risk coming across as disloyal? Across six main studies and three supplemental studies (N = 7,655)—including an analysis of actual ads from recent US elections—we investigate consumers’ reactions to disloyalty ads by candidates from their own party. We test three competing hypotheses: polarization (negative backlash), preference for independence (positive reactions), and electability (contextually driven responses). We find the most support for the electability hypothesis. Consumers tolerate candidates from their party who use disloyalty ads when electability is a salient concern, for example, in competitive races or high-stakes contexts. Conversely, consumers react negatively to the use of disloyalty ads in safer or low-stakes scenarios. Our findings examine a previously undocumented advertising strategy, introduce “electability” as an important construct for research at the intersection of political marketing and consumer psychology, and provide practical insights for marketers interested in deploying disloyalty ads without incurring adverse effects for doing so.