This essay is studying the Parliament parties´ use of negative campaigning in party leader debates in the connected Swedish general election in 2014. The research questions in this essay are: How does the use of negative campaigning appear in the Swedish party leader debates 2014? In what way does the use of negative campaigning differ due to: - The time lasting until the election day? - Whether the party is a government party or an opposition party? - The party’s latest result (positive or negative) in the polls? - The party’s position in the ideological left-right scale? The method used to perform the study is a quantitative content analysis. The objects that are analyzed are four party leader debates connected to the general election 2014. The variables used in the research are Negative and Not negative (in the latest variable both positive and neutral messages are included). The debates analyzed are videos of the entire debates. The total speech time and the use of negative campaigning for each party is calculated in seconds and translated to percent (how many percent each party use to negative campaigning in total for each debate). The results show that negative campaigning is more used during the election process than before it has started. There is no clear pattern between the use of negative campaigning and closeness of the election day. The political parties that are in opposition tend to use more negative campaigning than the parties that are in the government. The polls and the ideological left- right scale shows no significant pattern related to the use of negative campaigning.

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