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Measuring Party Identification in Taiwan's Party System

Szu-yin Ho and Jaushieh Joseph Wu
1996 / 05
Volume 3, No.1

pp.1-16
Paper

Abstract

This paper attempts to re-conceptualize party identification in Taiwan's multiparty system and to measure it empirically with the 1995 national legislative election survey data provided by the Election Study Center, National Chengchi University. The traditional uni-dimensional measurement of identification on the KMT and the DPP came across a hurdle when the New Party was formed in 1993. The replacing measure-ment of three categories, together with three levels of strength for each category, presents as an alternative solution to the problem. However, this measurement does not take into account the voters who identify political parties negatively, and it may be remedied by a new three-dimensional measurement. As detailed in this paper, the new measure-ment is able to find roughly 16 percent of negative party identifiders, and to more accurately locate different types of party identification in a multi-dimensional setting.

Keywords

Political party

Party identification

Measurement

KMT

DPP

Voting behavior