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The "Stand by Your Ad'' (SBYA) provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act requires federal candidates to claim responsibility for their advertising content. Using an experimental survey design to show respondents actual campaign ads with and without the SBYA language, we find that SBYA produces no effect on respondents' levels of trust in candidates or the ads themselves. However, there is a statistically significant effect on respondents' confidence in the campaign as well as on respondents' support for the ad's sponsor. In ads sponsored by the presidential candidates, respondents' reactions to the ads were further filtered through their pre-dispositions toward the candidates.
In a typical candidate-sponsored presidential campaign advertisement during 2004, President George W. Bush finished the ad by looking into the camera to pronounce, "I'm George W. Bush, and I approve this message." In other ads, a Bush voice-over was heard while footage of him strolling a White House patio was shown. John Kerry's ads had similar tag lines. In some, the approval message was embedded in the text of the ad itself. In one Kerry campaign ad, Senator Kerry appeared on screen to say, "I'm John Kerry and I approve this message because we can't go it alone in Iraq. We have to share the burden with other countries. We shouldn't be cutting education and closing firehouses in America while we're opening them in Iraq." Down the ballot, candidates for federal office at all levels found ways to approve of campaign advertisements. David Wu, an incumbent Democrat representing Oregon's First Congressional District used one ad to put on a harness and climb to the edge of a bridge as he discussed his view that "privatizing Social security is about as risky as, well, jumping off a bridge." He ends the ad by saying, "I approve this message, and I do my own stunts," and then leaps off the bridge with a bungee cord attached. In 2004, President Bush, Senator Kerry, Representative Wu, and hundreds of other political candidates for federal office across the country included in their ads remarkably similar tag lines: "I approve this message."
The appearance of political advertisement disclaimers in the 2004 election originated from what was then a new requirement enacted through the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of...