Negative campaigning has been a topic of intense academic debate for several decades, with scholars concerned with the effects on the electorate and on democracy writ large (Brooks and Geer, 2007; Lau et al., 2007). Recently, this debate has been renewed due to growing levels of polarisation and division in Western Democracies, as well as by the use of social media (Stromer-Galley et al., 2018).