Republican negativity
It isn't new. Don't forget Nixon's campaign in 1968, the McCarthy years, etc.
Does science offer any clues?
1. People right-of-center politically spend more time looking at unpleasant images, and people left-of-center politically spend more time looking at pleasant images.
http://www.procon.org/sourcefiles/the-left-rolls-with-the-good-the-right-confronts-the-bad-physiology-and-cognition-in-politics.pdf
2. People who react strongly to disgusting images, such as a picture of someone eating worms, are more likely to self-identify as conservative.
http://2012election.procon.org/sourcefiles/Smith_Disgust_Sensitivity.pdf
3. Conservatives and liberals react similarly to positive incentives, but conservatives have greater sensitivity to negative stimuli.
http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1310&context=theses
4. Conservatism is focused on preventing negative outcomes, while liberalism is focused on advancing positive outcomes.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10478400903028581
5. Conservatives learn better from negative stimuli than from positive stimuli and are more risk avoidant than liberals.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103109000833
6. Individual political attitudes correlate with physiological traits, such as sensitivity to sudden noises and threatening visual images. Conservatives are more sensitive to them.
http://www.procon.org/sourcefiles/political-attitudes-vary-with-physiological-traits.pdf
= new reply since forum marked as read
And thanks for your post,Buckeye_Democrat . 
From Ohio I'm guessing. 
I spent some time there volunteering for Kerry in Columbus once upon a time.
...that my new friends there collected on the OSU campus and souvenired me before I returned home to California. Great people in Ohio! 
... of people here, of course. I like it here overall.
Putting buckeyes in your pocket is supposed to be good luck. 
