Elections: effects of the stand by your ad provision on attitudes about candidates and campaigns

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 SB YA 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 ads sponsor. In ads sponsored by the presidential candidates, respondents' reactions to the ads were further filtered through their predispositions 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 [...]