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Measuring Party Identification in Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study

Yi-Ching Shiao
2009 / 05
Volume 16, No.1

pp.67-93
10.6612/tjes.2009.16.01.67-93
Paper

Abstract

The major purpose of this article is to examine the measurement of party identification in the Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study (TEDS) from the perspectives of intransitivity and multidimensionality. Furthermore, an index of blue-green party difference is constructed to measure the voters' relative preference between the pan-blue camp and the pan-green camp in order to better account for their voting decision. It is found that the measurement of party identification in TEDS is successful with regard to the transitivity assumption. The fact that more than twenty percent of respondents share the highest score for the major parties indicates the presence of multidimensionality in this measurement. Last, it also empirically demonstrated that the index of blue-green party difference is a better measure because of its evident transitivity and its stronger statistical association with voting decision.

Keywords

party identification

transitivity

multidimensional measurement