The positive side to negativity ACCORDING to the ALP's "A New Way" ad, "the old politics of negativity just won't work." Luckily, there's a new politics of negativity to replace it: so far, 60 per cent of the election ads posted on Labor's website involve attacks on the Coalition, with the proportion for the Coalition being similar. That is neither undesirable nor unexpected. On the contrary, negative advertising has been at the heart of campaign playbooks since the dawn of electoral competition.