In a political campaign, candidates attempt to mobilize voters by using contributions from individuals, corporations, and political parties. It is an accepted fact of democracy that campaigns should attempt to outdo one another in both the amount they collect in contributions and what they spend on campaigns. Previous research has explored the incumbent advantage in campaign finance, but many interesting factors remain. For instance, is fund-raising aided by factors such as the closeness of an election or a candidate’s tenure in the Legislative Yuan? In this study, we explain campaign contributions using data from prediction markets and television news reports to account for variations in campaign spending. Our results suggest that incumbent advantage does indeed affect contributions and that DPP candidates outperformed other candidates in campaign finance. We also find that previous electoral margins and television news coverage contribute significantly to campaign donations, and that election betting has an impact on spending. These findings suggest that a political party’s general campaign can influence the election race of an individual candidate, and that contributors tend to bet on likely winners, deepening the influence of the electoral system on competing political parties.

Cognitive madisoniansim is crucial in political situations. It is not only an important value of democratic societies, but also a factor in explaining split-ticket voting. With the increase of minor parties and candidates, the media believe that Taiwan’s 2016 general elections have shown the most fierce split-ticket voting. It is worth mentioning that we shall not ignore the issue of endogeneity caused by partisanship when discussing the relationship between cognitive madisoniansim and split-ticket voting. Based on the panel data of TEDS2016, this study aims to recategorize the cognitive madisoniansim of the respondents and resolve the issue of endogeneity by applying a generalized structural equation model (GSEM). By doing so, we aim to examine the relationship between cognitive madisoniansim and splitticket voting.

The findings show that the public’s cognitive madisoniansim was indeed affected by party preference. DPP supporters have tended to support cognitive madisoniansim in the past. However, they stopped supporting it once the DDP took over the government. The KMT showed the opposite situation. They had been against cognitive madisoniansim in the past. When they began losing elections, they started to support it. Regarding voting decisions, cognitive madsoniansim has positive effects on people’s decisions about straight-ticket voting or split-ticket voting. Nevertheless, most voters who cast straight-ticket voting for the DPP are those who stopped supporting or constantly supported cognitive madisoniansim. These two groups of voters both prefer the DDP. This result indicates that the effect of voters’ cognitive madisoniansim on their voting behaviors still reflects their party preference. The above-mentioned issues present the endogeneity issue derived by explaining the split-ticket voting behaviors by cognitive madisoniansim and the inevitability of GSEM methods. We suggest that researchers not ignore the effect of party preference as they examine the relationship between cognitive madisoniansim and split-ticket voting.

A survey is designed to explore the participants’ opinions, attitudes and actions towards certain topics. The amount of information possessed by participants is not the only factor that influences their willingness to participate; question types and options design also influence participants’ responses. In reality, given cost constraints and questionnaire length, it is not feasible to provide a multiple survey design for a single concept, or to verify participants' response mode under different survey designs. This study used an experimental design to measure political knowledge from Taiwan’s Election and Democratization Study (TEDS) as an example, based on (1) an “open-ended vs. close-ended” question design; (2) whether it provides “non-response” as an option, to design four different types of surveys. The study uses a posttest-only control group design with university students as participants. We randomly released the questionnaires to participants and had 1,110 valid questionnaires.

The study found that question type and non-response design affects the participant response mode; a close-ended questionnaire design does increase the correct response ratio from participants, but it also produces a higher proportion of incorrect answers than an open-ended questionnaire. An openended questionnaire design does not have options as reference, and so it could lower the willingness of participants to take part in the survey, and it therefore resulted in a higher non-response ratio. From the composite design of question type and non-response option, we were able to precisely estimate types of participants as in Mondak (1999), but the combinations of different types of participants vary significantly as results from the level of difficulties in a questionnaire designed to measure political knowledge.

Past literature suggests that the Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV) electoral system used in multi-member districts places great emphasis on selecting candidates over parties. However, given the diverse and interrelated attributes of local politicians, this study uses county councilor elections as an example and employs online surveys combined with conjoint experimental design to effectively distinguish which personal attributes are more important to voters when choosing among candidates. On the other hand, while the positive partisanship represented by party identification still has explanatory power, the impact of “negative partisanship” on voting choices has recently received considerable attention. Therefore, when making voting choices, the interactive effect of whether voters have negative partisanship and what their personal preferences for candidates are is the focus of this study.

This study found that the preferred personal attributes of local representatives in the minds of most Taiwanese voters are younger age, political experience, no involvement in corruption, local residency, and higher education. However, the study also found that negative partisanship still makes most voters sensitive to the party label of local representatives, rather than just voting based on preferred personal attributes. Some voters may even vote for candidates deemed corrupt. Additionally, among voters with no specific party preference, the proportion of those who dislike the pan-green camp is higher than those who dislike the pan-blue camp, which should be a warning for the current ruling party. This study provides inspiration for the nomination strategies of political parties in local elections. By understanding the expectations of different party-affiliated groups, parties can put forward candidates who cater to the preferences of the public, which can promote more active participation of the public in local elections.

Changes in the political trust among Taiwanese students after visiting mainland China symbolize the effectiveness of the CPC’s political propaganda. This issue is critically related to the stability of Taiwan’s democratic polity and hence warrants the close attention of supporters of democracy from around the world. A total of 516 Taiwanese youth who visited mainland China on exchange programs were studied.  Four hypotheses were proposed by combining the theories of social contact, political socialization, and rational choice. The results show that after the students visited mainland China, the number of those with greater political trust in their home country was 13.46% higher than those with lower trust. The average change significantly increased by 0.06. All four hypotheses were supported by empirical evidence. After the cross-polity contact, students’ perceived hostility of the Communist Party of China was reduced, or they were more satisfied with the level of Taiwan’s democracy, or their evaluation of Taiwan’s industrial prospects were better, or they less willing to go to mainland China for career development, leading to greater trust in Taiwanese officials. This study makes a unique contribution to the literature by combining true-acquaintance contact and political mobilization to propose the perceived hostility hypothesis for changes in political trust.