Journal of Electoral Studies

Issues

Home Issues Backissues Volume 31, No.1 Environmental Protest and Green Party Vote Share: An Investigation of Party List Vote in the 2012 Legislative Election

Environmental Protest and Green Party Vote Share: An Investigation of Party List Vote in the 2012 Legislative Election

Chih-sung Teng, Chia-feng Huang, and Chin-en Wu
2015 / 11
Volume 22, No.2

pp.41-69
10.6612/tjes.2015.22.02.41-69
Paper

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between environmental protests and parties' vote shares. Whether environmental protest contributes to the vote share of the Green party? As Green party emphasizes environment protection, people who suffer from environmental pollution is more likely to endorse Green Party. If not, what are the factors behind the situation? We collect and categorize environmental protest data between 1987 and 2009. Applying GIS and spatial analysis, we collapse protest events by township and issue types. Combining legislative election results, we analyze the influence of environmental protests on the vote shares of parties. The empirical result shows that anti-industrial pollution protests exert the most significant effect on party vote share but the influence varies across parties. First, anti-industrial pollution protest is not significantly associated with the vote share of Green Party. The larger the number of anti-industrial pollution protest in a township, the higher the DPP's vote share and the lower the KMT's vote share. For the other types of environmental protests, we do not find comparable effect of protests on vote sharing. In this article we also find that it is socio-economic status of a township rather than the intensity of environmental protest that affect the electoral performance of Green party. Finally, the empirical model also demonstrates the significance of neighborhood effect on parties' vote shares.

Keywords

Green party vote share

environmental protest

post-materialism

party competition

spatial autocorrelation