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Analysis of Straight- and Split-Ticket Voting in Three-in-One Election: The Case of 2010 Kaohsiung Metropolitan Elections

Chi Huang, Chang-Chih Lin, and Hung-Chung Wang
2013 / 05
Volume 20, No.1

pp.01-45
10.6612/tjes.2013.20.01.01-45
Paper

Abstract

Three-in-one election held on November 27th 2010 is the first five metropolitan elections in the history of Taiwan's local elections. Voters in this election could cast three ballots for different political positions: mayor, city councilor, and head of li. This study focuses on the Kaohsiung city and analyzes voters' straight- and split-ticket voting in the 2010 three-in-one election.In general, the character of electoral competition is shaped by electoral systems and the level of election. Single-member district with plurality system is considered to contribute to a competition between two major parties, whereas minor parties are more likely to survive under the SNTVMMD system. In the 2010 Kaohsiung mayoral election, then DPP incumbent Kaohsiung County Magistrate Chiu-hsing Yang ran for mayoral election as an independent candidate and replaced the KMT candidate, Chao-shun Huang, as the major competitor of incumbent mayor, Chu Chen. Our study finds that indeed some pan-blue partisans voted for Yang strategically in the mayoral election. This finding to an extent confirms the rumor of ”dump Huang and save Yang” before the election.Meanwhile, most of those pan-blue partisans who voted Yang for mayor remained to support pan-blue candidates in the city councilor election, showing a split-ticket voting pattern. In contrast, pan-green partisans demonstrated a high degree of loyalty to the DPP mayoral candidate, Chu Chen, and the pan-green candidates in the city councilor elections.As for the lowest-level election of head of li, our study shows that there is no significant relationship between vote choice of head of li and that of mayor and city councilor. This finding indicates that the character of the election of head of li is quite different from that of mayor and councilor election.

Keywords

three-in-one election

straight- and split-ticket voting

strategic voting

ecological regression

party competition