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Home Issues Backissues Volume 27, No.2 “West Coast Effect” and Strategic Voting? Spatial Analysis of the 2018 Taipei City Mayoral Election

“West Coast Effect” and Strategic Voting? Spatial Analysis of the 2018 Taipei City Mayoral Election

Chih-sung Teng
2020 / 11
Volume 27, No.2

pp.93-126
10.6612/tjes.202011_27(2).0003
Paper

Abstract

This study explores the changes in voters’ choices due to the delayed voting in the 2018 Taipei City mayoral election. During the election, the incumbent mayor, Wen-je Ko, faced strong challenges from Shou-chung Ting (Kuomintang) and Pasuya Yao (Democratic Progressive Party). When voting stations started to count votes at 4 pm, most news channels reported an extremely tight race between Ko and Ting. The final election outcome was a narrow-margined win for Ko. For Shou-chung Ting, the outcome was very controversial, as this election was held concurrently with a referendum and hence the voting time was seriously delayed. A substantial proportion of voters cast their votes after 4 pm, already aware of the results of other voting stations from news reports. This information was likely to lead to changes in voters’ choices, resulting in further strategic voting and changes in the final outcome of the election. In order to examine Ting’s argument, this paper collects the election results of each voting station and the registration time after the counting was completed and published by the Central Election Commission. Through spatial regressions (SLM and SEM) and geographic weighted regression (GWR), we find that at the village level, some votes indeed flowed. However, at the city level, Shou-chung Ting’s concern has no empirical support. The overall impact of the delayed voting on the three candidates was insignificant.

Keywords

Strategic Voting

West Coast effect

Taipei City Mayoral Election

Spatial Analysis

Geographic Weighted Regression