Negative Politics In Bumper Stickers

With the presidential election around the corner, more people than ever are finding ways to express their political opinions, and makestickers.com offers customers an outlet for their views. Recently, many customers have chosen to express themselves through political stickers, including custom McCain and Obama bumper stickers. As more people invent their own political messages, an overwhelming trend in “negative tones” has been noticed. Data collected over a ten day period at makestickers.com shows that 68% of phrases used in custom ordered political bumper stickers are “negative”, meaning they showed “support” through insulting or mentioning wrongs in opposing candidates. According to the data, approximately 72% of stickers mentioning Obama were negative.

Surprisingly, very few of these “anti-Obama” stickers followed through to include a line which showed support for McCain. This suggests that people may not be in support of a certain candidate as much as they are against the ideas of another. On the other hand, 62% of the stickers mentioning McCain were positive, but were overall much less popular than those talking about Obama. Data was also recorded on “pro” and “anti” party stickers. Most of the Anti-Republican stickers revolved around criticisms of George “Dubya” Bush. Not surprisingly, both were much more likely to have “negative” messages: 84% of the Democrat stickers and 75% of Republican stickers follow this trend. This data was collected during July 2008 by employees of Graphicsland Inc., operator of MakeStickers.com. For more information, contact Marty Groark, Graphicsland, 8061 W 186th Street, Tinley Park, IL 60487, 1-800-347-2744.