Journal of Electoral Studies

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Home Issues Backissues Volume 31, No.1 Cross-Strait Economic Openness, Identity, and Vote Choice: An Analysis of the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections

Cross-Strait Economic Openness, Identity, and Vote Choice: An Analysis of the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections

Chin-En Wu and Yi-Tzu Lin
2013 / 11
Volume 20, No.2

pp.1-35
10.6612/tjes.2013.20.02.01-35
Paper

Abstract

This article examines across-strait trade openness and vote choices in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. We first demonstrate two trends about economic assessments in the 2008 and 2012 elections. First, more and more people consider the economic effect of economic openness as neutral. Next, respondents decouple their assessments in the aggregate level and family level. While a substantial percentage of voters still think that economic openness has been bringing about economic prosperity for Taiwan, it has not done so at the family level. As to the effect of economic assessment, we find that the traditional economic voting battery does not exert comparable effect on voting as economic openness. Next, the socio-tropic assessment of economic openness is relatively more important than the pocket-book assessment. More importantly, we demonstrate how political identities, party identification and unification-independence choice, shape the influence of economic assessment on voting decisions. In general, economic assessments exert greater effects on pan-blue and pro-unification voters, while exert smaller effects on pan-green and pro-independence voters. This pattern is mainly associated with the extent that incoming messages are congruent with voters' existing beliefs.

Keywords

economic voting

cross-strait economic openness

party identification

unification-independence choice

presidential election