Negative campaign in the presidential debates of democratic Romania

This work aims to present the evolution of Romanian’s elections presidential campaigns from 1990 to 2014, focusing on how the main candidates (the two arrived in the second round) used negative campaign techniques to build their visibility, their image of future President of the State. The analysis of their participation in final political debates on TV will be directed towards identifying those negative campaigning elements, negative aspects, disadvantages, minuses, weaknesses that each candidate attributes to his opponent. If sometimes the negative campaigning can be constructive, by amplifying the competitiveness between the candidates, more often it is responsible for guiding the electoral race to another level – that of the tabloid scandals, by invoking arguments that look ridiculous, inconsistent and irrelevant.