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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.
Abstract
Along with the democratic development of Taiwanese politics and the diversification of information channels, voters now have access to abundant information prior to elections. Owing to this, the final decision of some voters might be swayed by changes in public opinion polls or by the collective will of groups of people. The actual vote of these citizens may not be what they originally preferred, which cannot be characterized as sincere voting behavior. In the investigation of different types of non-sincere voting behavior, strategic voting is undoubtedly a major research issue among scholars of election studies delving into voter psychology. Strategic voting primarily refers to voters who decide to cast their votes for candidates with better prospects of winning so as to avoid “wasting” their vote. Past overseas literature has confirmed that whether in single-member districts or in proportional representation or multi-member districts, strategic voting has been observed among voters. As for academia in Taiwan, increasing effort has been made in recent years to study strategic voting that may take place in domestic elections, and the definition and measurement of related concepts, such as the effect of split-ticket and party voting. Most studies, however, are confined to observing the results of split-ticket voting, from which they surmise the possibility of strategic voting. In fact, the actual motivation for strategic voting may be very diverse, but the definition of sincere voting is relatively clear and uncontroversial.
Instead, this study attempts to base itself mainly on post-election panel records provided by Taiwan’s Election and Democratization Study (TEDS), together with an integrated consideration of a pre- and post- election survey and a comparison of election outcomes. With Taiwan’s 2012 presidentialcum- parliamentary elections as the source of empirical evidence, this study adopts counterfactual reasoning and literature on the random utility model, applying them to revise the survey results of the original poll data so as to estimate a reasonable proportion of actual sincere voting. Furthermore, it sums up important characteristics of sincere voters who had different vote choices and demonstrated the subtle differences between split-ticket voting, sincere voting and strategic voting. Finally, the study discusses the various statistical differences between these three voting behaviors.
