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Home Issues Backissues Volume 31, No.1 Populism and the 2020 Mayoral Recall and Byelection of Kaohsiung City

Populism and the 2020 Mayoral Recall and Byelection of Kaohsiung City

Tsung-han Liao
2022 / 11
Volume 29, No.2

pp.115-154
10.6612/tjes.202211_29(2).0004
Paper

Appendix

Abstract

Populism is deeply embedded in a democratic society, and a thin ideology composed of many different concepts affects people’s attitudes toward political elites and their vote choices. Based on voters’ populist inclination, this paper analyzes the voting in the recall of the mayor and the by-election of Kaohsiung City in 2020. In the two different voting periods, the voters’ populist inclination was affected by their demographic background and political attitudes.
This study uses two sets of data to analyze the voting for the recall and the byelection. One is “A Voting Study of Kaohsiung City’s Third Mayoral Recall” hosted by Tsai Chia-hung and conducted by the National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center, and the other is “Taiwan’s Election and Democratization Study, 2020- 2024(I): Kaohsiung City Mayor By-Elections: Telephone Interview hosted by Chen Luhui” conducted by the National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center. We found that during the recall period, populism was affected by the age and education of the voters. During the by-election period, the populist inclination was affected by voters’ party identity, Taiwanese/Chinese identity, education and occupation. In addition, the populist inclination of Kaohsiung voters did not affect their decision to vote for recall. Their satisfaction with Han Guo-yu was the main reason for voters to vote for the recall and in the by-election, voters with lower populist inclination voted for Chen Chi-mai, but it did not influence voters to vote for Li Mei-jhen. Although Han Guo-yu helped Li Mei-jhen in the campaign, it did not affect the voters’ choice.

Keywords

populism

recall

by-election

Han wave