Strategic alienation: The dynamics of group appeals in negative campaigning

Abstract This paper examines how political parties use social group appeals in negative campaigning. We argue that parties strategically target opponents with group-based attacks to portray them as failing key social groups. Using a novel dataset of Facebook and Twitter posts by parties in the UK (2016–2024), linked to voter perceptions of group representation from the British Election Study, we test whether such attacks are more likely when the sender party enjoys strong group-based credibility, or the target party is seen as a weak representative of the respective group, or both. We find no evidence for the former but strong support for the latter: parties disproportionately target rivals with poor reputations for representing specific groups, and especially so when the sender holds a reputational advantage. These findings advance our understanding of identity-driven party competition, showing that group-based attacks exploit opponents’ representational vulnerabilities rather than reinforce attackers’ own strength.