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Abstract

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.

Keywords

cognitive madisonianism
split-ticket voting
endogeneity
GSEM
party preference

Abstract

This study examines the shifts in voter turnout during Taiwan’s two referenda in 2018 and 2021, resulting from the transition from concurrent elections to separate ones. The research reveals a relationship between referendum turnout and the percentage of young voters when they are no longer held concurrently with general elections. In 2018, regions with a higher proportion of young voters experienced higher participation in referenda, whereas in 2021, areas with a lower percentage of young voters displayed increased turnout. Furthermore, even after controlling for the level of higher education among the population and the political party in power at the town levels, an inverse relationship between the proportion of young voters and turnout remained consistent. When referenda were decoupled from general elections, a higher percentage of young voters was associated with lower overall turnout, and the relationship between higher education and turnout was found to be insignificant. When comparing changes in turnout between cities not governed by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), a significant increase in turnout was observed in DPP-led areas in 2021. This suggests that when referenda were decoupled from general elections, the ruling party became more proactive in mobilizing voters. Furthermore, an analysis of approval votes indicates that higher turnout encourages more approval votes. However, in the context of reduced turnout during nonconcurrent elections, the proportion of approval votes also decreased accordingly.

Keywords

cost of voting
concurrent elections
referendum participation
voter turnout
youth population

Abstract

Keywords

Single non-transferable vote
Medium-size district
Duverger's law
Proportionality
Hybrid systems
Strategic voting

Abstract

During the last 50 years. as election polls in the U. S. and in most other countries have proliferated. there has been an ongoing controversy over their electoral effects. Their perceived influence on election outcomes has been sufficient to lead to calls for legislation restricting the publishing of opinion polls during a campaign, restrictions that already exist in countries as diverse as Germany. Japan, France, South Korea. and Brazil (McAllister and Studlar 1991; Mutz. 1992) . These restrictions suggest that pre-election polls have some effects on election outcomes, or at least that some people suspect some effects and think the results could. more or less, hurt the fairness of an election. Counter arguments conclude that perception of public opinion has little impact on vote preference (Asher 1992, Marsh. 1983; Merkle 1991 ) . Many believe that traditional factors such as affect. candidates, issue. party. etc ., are the factors that determine vote preference rather than the perceptions of public preference ( Niemi and Weishberg, 1993 ) . Despite these arguments. evidence from surveys and experimental studies remains inconclusive. One of the earliest discussions of polls' effect on voting. by Lazarsfeld. Berelson. and Gaudet (1948) , found many voters attempting to sense the direction of public opinion and the outcome in order to vote "with the winner. " Follow-up work (Berelson. Lazarsfeld, and McPhee. 1954) revealed that a bandwagon effect (perception guiding preference) and a projection explanation (preference guiding perception) carried about equal weight in presidential election voting. Some laboratory studies of artificial elections coupled with bogus poll results produced an "underdog" effect of people shifting to the minority rather than majority view (Ceci. 1982, Fletias, 1971 ) . Evidence from the 1988 NES Super Tuesday Study showed that some voters vote for their second (or even lower) choice rather than their most preferred candidate in order to stop another candidate they like even less (Abramson et. ai, 1992 ) .

Keywords

band float effect
projection effect
strategic voting
US presidential election
voting behavior
political psychology

Abstract

It is well recognized that intra-party competition marks a major consequence of the single nontransferable vote under multi-member district system(SNTV-MMD), currently used in Taiwan's legislature elections. A key issue in Taiwan's electoral study is thus how candi-dates, especially those from the same party, divide their votes a-mong various categories that differentiate the voters. Since the data set revealing this information is usually a large matrix of categorical variables, existing multivariate statistical methods are either inap-plicable or inadequate. This paper demonstrates that correspond-dence analysis is an appropriate statistical tool to solve this prob-lem. This method treats an n × m matrix as n vectors in an m-di-mensional space, and finds a k-dimensional subspace that maxi-mizes the variance of the projections of the n vectors. Utilizing this method, this paper first illustrates the Chi-square distance between candidates and the sub-district regions. It then designs indexes to describe the degree of vote concentration for each candidate, fac-tion, and party, and correlate it with the electoral performances of these actors. Statistical analysis indicates that, given the same vote share, inertia, and dimensionality, overnominating one candidate decreases the seat share of the KMT by 11.73%.

Keywords

Single nontransferable voting
SNTV
Election in Taiwan
Correspondence analysis
Vote division; Local factions

Abstract

Voting tendencies has been the focus of political field.Due to thelimitations of the secretive voting system,the only way to learn each individual'svoting preferences is to take polls.However,the reliability ofthe poll results is questionable.One thing that we can be sure of is thatthe voting results reflect every citizen's decision.It would be a risk of ecologicalfallacy if one hypothesizes the voting attitude based on the votingresult.Based on the voting result in the Taipei election of 1998,first ofall,this thesis gives an analysis of the phenomenon of split-ticket votingbetween political parties in City Mayor and City congress.ApplyingKing's EI model analyzes how citizens chose their desired candidates amongthe three political parties.It also experimentally applies the statisticsmethods to lower the risk of ecological fallacy.So it turns out that asexpected,the supporters of the New Party adapt split-ticket voting byvoting KMT's candidate Mao Ying-jo.The rate of split-ticket votingreaches 98.29%.In addition,split-ticket voting also happens to the supportersof KMT's congress.The voters in split-ticket voting vote forDPP's City Mayor candidate Chen Shuei-Bien.The split-ticket votingrate registers 48.28%.

Keywords

split ticket voting
Taipei City elections
party dealignment
ethnic background
checks and balances
strategic voting

Abstract

It is generally assumed that strong grassroots support ensures thatTaiwanese legislators get support from the same voters over repeated elections.This paper attempts to test this hypothesis.We look at each candidate'sstrongest areas in each election.By comparing these areas overseveral elections,we can search for evidence of instability in his or hervote support.In general,we find that there is far less stability in support patternsthan might be expected.It is rare that all of a candidate's strongest areasin one election are included in his or her strongest areas in subsequentelections.In other words,many legislators have been elected and reelectedwith significantly different patterns of support.For the overwhelmingmajority of candidates,the crucial variable in determining stabilityis the size of their hometowns.Candidates from large townshipsgenerally have more stable support,while those from smaller townshipshave less stable support.

Keywords

ecological fallacy
split-ticket voting
Taipei election
strategic voting

Abstract

In the study of public opinion and mass political attitudes, there are many research subjects which focus on the study of the nature of mass political ideology and the ideological interpretation of voting choice. In this paper, we use the survey data of Taiwan Presidential Election in 2000, to explore the ideological differences between the Blue and the Green. We want to know whether or not the Taiwan's electorate holds political ideologies? Is there a logical coherence or consistency in the mass attitudes toward issues? And, do the electors vote ideologically? By Left-right self-placement, this study finds that there are 48.37% responses who hold political ideologies and think of political affairs in term of Left-right political spectrum. There are obvious ideological differences between the Blue and the Green. More importantly, voters' political ideologies not only affect their party preference and issue position, but are also a factor in voting decision. Therefore, except for the party voting model, the candidate-oriented voting model, and the issue voting model, we perhaps should pay attention to the ideological voting model, too.

Keywords

political ideology
Left-right political spectrum
party preference
political issues
voting choice
ideological voting

Abstract

Previous studies on the corruption have been focused on specific settings of the institutions and social structures. This paper, con the contrary, emphasizes on the individual voters and is aimed to explain why do voters support for the corrupted parties. Based on the ”implicit trading theory” proposed by Barry S. Rundquist et al. (1977), Conditional Logit analysis is estimated to understand the Taiwanese voting behavior. The result shows that the party's corruption imagines has a negative effect to draw votes. While this negative effect can also be minimized if the party proposes the attractive policy platforms. That is to say, voters will compromise to the corrupted parties for their policy preferences. As for the specific effect to each party, it is the KMT that the corruption imagines has the minimum influence, comparing to DPP and NP.

Keywords

corruption
issue voting
implicit trading
choice specific variable

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss whether the evaluation of economic condition in electorate influences the voting choice. The election in Taiwan, with the bad economic condition, do the economic voting exist? When the electorate evaluate that the economic performance is bad, will they punish the ruling party by their votes? We will discuss the relation between the evaluation of economic conditions and voting choices, attributive theory and the heterogeneity of economic voting. From the discovery of this article, there is obvious difference between personal and national evaluation of economic conditions and voting choices. In the multinomial voting model, the economic evaluation that affects the voting choices is not the main factor. Therefore, by using attributive theory and sample choosing, I find some electorate who has the economic voting character. But in the testing of the heterogeneity of economic voting, political trust and the national economic evaluation don't exist the interaction. The effect of economic evaluation to the voting decision doesn't be affected by political trust. We can know that there is heterogeneity in the economic voting of Taiwan electorate. However, what kind of variable causes the effect is the main continuous issue.

Keywords

economic voting
heterogeneity
attribution theory
party identification
political trust

Abstract

Japanese party politics witnessed a dramatic change in 1993. The then ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had dominated the Japanese politics since 1955, lost its majority seats in the 1993 House of Representatives election. Three years later, however, the LDP staged a comeback and played the major role in forming the new coalition government. It managed to maintain this control in the 2000 House election. We are curious about how Japanese voters responded to the turmoil of Japanese party system during this period. Taking advantage of a panel data of the Japanese Election Study (JES), we explore the dynamics of electoral stability and change of the LDP supporters during the 1993, 1996 and 2000 House elections. Among several Markov chain models analyzed in this paper, we find that the Black and White model, a special case of the Mover-Stayer model, fits the JES panel data best. Specifically, this model splits subjects into two latent subgroups with maximum intragroup homogeneity and intergroup heterogeneity, each of which has its own estimated transition probabilities. The first subgroup (“stayers”), which consists of about 48.28% of the panel, always maintains its LDP or non-LDP party preference without any change. The second subgroup, which consists of about 51.72% of the panel, however, moves randomly. In 1993, 37% of “stayers” supported the LDP while 40.46% of “random movers” supported the LDP. In 1996 election, half of this 40.46% of “random movers” shifted away from the LDP while the other 59.54% non-LDP supporters shifted to the LDP. As a result, the LDP enjoyed a net gain of 4.93% in total votes in 1996. Since the Black and White model has reached its steady state after the 1996 transition, it indicates little net change in year 2000’s election.

Keywords

panel data
electoral stability and change
Markov chain
habitual voting
Black and Withe model

Abstract

How voters cast their votes in successive elections determines not only the fate of candidates but also the rise and fall of political parties and sometimes even causes party system changes. The subject of electoral stability and change, due to its significance in theory and practice, has long attracted the attention of political scientists around the world. Despite the voluminous publications cumulated so far, however, there are still heated debates regarding how best to model this dynamic electoral process and to estimate the amount of changes. The purpose of this paper is two-folds. First, it clarifies some confusion in the literature caused by its failing to distinguish gross change from net change and to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of various types of data in evaluating these two changes. After pointing out how panel data prevail over repeated cross-sections and aggregate data in estimating both forms of changes, we then proceed to identify a statistical model that best fits the categorical measurement of electoral changes dominant in panel surveys. The second part of this paper, therefore, pinpoints discrete-time discrete-state Markov chain models as ideal tools for describing the dynamic electoral process and further analyzing the sources of change patterns. The transition probabilities of Markov models coincide with the theoretical concepts of flow-of-the-votes and reflect the way state dependence shapes the trajectories of electoral changes. Finally, we apply a mixed Markov model to the three-wave Japanese Election Study (JES) panel data set to illustrate the potential of this technique.

Keywords

electoral stability and change
straight-and split-ticket voting
dynamic process
panel data
gross change
net change
Markov chain models

Abstract

This paper applies the economic voting theory to analyze the county magistrates and city mayors elections in Taiwan and uses a county-and city- level pooling data from 1989 to 2001 to examine the possible factors which cause the party rotation of the county magistrates and city mayors elections. After estimating Probit model, the primary finding is that the local unemployment rates have no impact on election outcomes of the county magistrates and city mayors. Instead, the national unemployment rates have a significant effect on election outcomes. Generally, the probabilities of party rotation of the counties and cities ruled by the president's party are lower than others. However, this advantage will be damaged as the national unemployment rate is higher in the election year than that in the previous year. Additionally, the incumbents are more likely to defeat the challengers and renew their term of office. Finally, the longer the governing party rules the county or city, the higher the probability of party rotation for this county or city.

Keywords

economic voting
local election
party rotation
renew term of office

Abstract

The news has softened in Taiwan as well as in most of the democratic societies. While people prefer more entertainment-related information on the media, scholars started worrying about the impact of soft news preference on voters' political knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to examine Taiwanese voters news preferences (hard/soft news) and how that related to their democratic values, political knowledge and voting. The results had found that people in Taiwan prefer reading soft news on newspaper and television. Age and education were the best variables predicting Taiwanese democratic values. Male, highly educated, read more newspapers, prefer hard news on the media, had higher democratic values, showed more factual knowledge toward politics. While there's no significant relationship between democratic values and people's voting on presidential election, their democratic values did significantly relate to their voting in 2004 Legislative election.

Keywords

democratic values
hard/soft news
political knowledge
voting

Abstract

In the argument of classic democratic theories, active political discussion is one of the motives for crafting democracy. By applying the data of 2004 TEDS, this study attempts to explore three questions: (1) who will be the major discussants when people urge advices? (2) how people discuss political issues within their social networks; (3) how political discussions affect voting participation. There are several findings. First, the social networks of the married people are based on family members, including spouse, parents, children, brothers, and sisters. In contrast, sources of the unmarried people's social networks are mainly from parents and friends. Second, the married people are more interested in discussing political issues than the unmarried people. This maybe due to the life cycle effect. According to the literature, the elder or married people will pay much attention to public affairs. In addition, most people are likely to choose their discussants who share consistent political opinions. Finally, the pressures or encouragements brought by political discussions impose significant effects on voting participation, although the extent of their influences depends on different cases. In conclusion, this study suggests that the data collected by panel studies are necessary for further research.

Keywords

social networks
political discussion
cross pressure
voting participation

Abstract

The subjects of retrospective voting and issue voting have recently become the major focuses in the study of voting behavior. It is quite appropriate to investigate the models of retrospective voting and issue voting for the 2005 elections in Taiwan. Except for the emphasis on the factors of candidates and political parties in the traditional analysis of voting behavior, this study tries to explore the influence of retrospective voting and issue voting on the results of the 2005 Magistrate Elections of Taipei and Kaohsiung Counties. By conducting empirical analysis, we have had some important findings as follow. First of all, both retrospective voting and issue voting are not the important factors in this given elections. Secondly, the factors of political parties and candidates are critical forces in influencing the outcome of the elections. Thirdly, the influence of the variable of political parties is powerful than the variable of candidates in the elections. Finally, the factors of ”Ma Ying-chiu phenomenon” and ”Chen Che-nan Scandal” are not as important as we expected intuitively.

Keywords

voting behavior
economic approach of voting behavior
retrospective voting
issue voting

Abstract

The 1990s witnessed an explosion in electoral reforms, especially in adopting the ”mixed electoral systems” which combine the features of both single-member districts (SMD) and proportional representation (PR). In January 1994, the Japanese Diet passed the law that replaced the single nontransferable vote (SNTV), in use since 1947, with a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system. Voters cast two votes in this new electoral system: a candidate vote in an SMD, and a party-list vote in the list tier portion of the ballot. The 1996 House election was the first test of the MMM system in Japan. The purpose of this article is to assess the effects of this electoral system change based on the 1996 post-election survey of the Japanese Election Study (JES). We focus particularly on the straight-and split-ticket voting patterns for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and their determinants. Our study indicates that straight-ticket rate was pretty high among the LDP supporters. That is, 80.16% of those who voted for an LDP candidate in an SMD also voted for the LDP on a party-list vote. A further analysis reveals that the LDP identifiers and the more conservative were much more likely to cast straight votes for the LDP, but on the other hand voters with college-level or higher education were less likely to do so. We also find that between two types of ticket-splitters, the percentage of voters who voted for an LDP candidate in an SMD and yet for the non-LDP on a party-list ballot was higher than those who voted the other around. This is probably due to the fact that some non-LDP party identifiers voted strategically in SMDs for the largest party's (i.e., the LDP) candidates, on the one hand, and yet voted sincerely for the non-LDP on the party-list ballot.

Keywords

Straight-Ticket Voting
Split-Ticket Voting
Mixed Electoral Systems
Mixed-Member Majoritarian System
the Liberal Democratic Party LDP

Abstract

Due to undervotes, misvotes, or switchvotes bias, many polling data users felt frustrated in using the past polling outcome to forecast the new election. It is commonplace for voters to note an early frontrunner in polls will be doomed to fall in the real election outcome. A beta-binominal distribution is suggested to model the accuracy of early poll outcome which strategically influences the polling data users such as political parties, candidates, and mass media in implementing the election campaign. We demonstrate the advantages of probabilistic distribution and Bayesian reasoning, and how to estimate the parameters from past data, in modifying the accuracy of prior poll outcomes. In comparison with the traditional frequency approach, beta-binominal mixture distribution imposes a statistical-adjusting framework with ability to proportionate a coherent mechanism that synthesizes the performances of prior votes. The empirical data sets include the 2004 US presidential election in Atlas Web and TVBS polls in 2006 Kaohsiung mayor election and 2008 presidential election in Taiwan. This paper describes the general fitting of beta-binomial distribution on both datasets and discusses fruitful avenues for future research.

Keywords

Public Polling
Voting Behavior
Election Forecasting
Mixture Distribution
Bayesian Statistics

Abstract

Ethnic and identity problems are important issues in modern Taiwanese politics. This paper examines Taiwanese identity from the aspect of ethnic and identity theory. The author develops a ”Taiwanese consciousness” index to explore the effect of identity in the past four presidential elections. The results show that Taiwanese consciousness has increased year by year, with more than half (54.7%) of Taiwan voters now classified into the high level of Taiwanese consciousness. The data also show that people with different degrees of Taiwanese consciousness vote differently and are increasingly polarized around identity. People with high-level Taiwanese consciousness tend to vote for pan-green candidates, while people with lowlevel Taiwanese consciousness tend to vote for pan-blue candidates. The data also indicate that the support bases of different parties are quite different. Votes for pan-green candidates mostly come from people with high-level Taiwanese consciousness, and this fraction has steadily increased; at the same time, support for pan-blue candidates has fallen significantly among this group. The analysis shows that partisan identification performs better than the ”Taiwanese consciousness” index at predicting vote choice, but the ”Taiwanese consciousness” index still has additional explanatory power. This paper also finds that the effect of ”sengi” (voters' provincial background) is not significant in the four presidential elections after controlling for other variables. This result suggests that the identity issue in Taiwan is now more an expression of ideological differences than ethnic ones.

Keywords

ethnicity
identity
Taiwanese consciousness
voting behavior

Abstract

Mixed or Hybrid electoral system, a combination of single-member district with plurality (SMD) and proportional representation (PR), has drawn a lot of attention from all over the world in the past few years. Recent studies have focused on its characters and classifications, its impact on the diversified social development, the connection with strategic voting behavior, the interaction with the campaign strategy and party competition, and the formulation of new party system. Based on the survey conducted by Japanese Election Study (JES) and Taiwanese Election and Democratization Study (TEDS), we compare the dynamic voting behaviors between Japan and Taiwan, since both of them follow the same routine of electoral transformation from SNTV to Mixed system. The results show there do have some difference, especially the ticket splitting of the two ballots and the voting stability during system transition, between two countries. From the cross sectional data analysis, we find KMT and DPP received more consistent support in two separate ballots, comparing with the major parties in Japan. As for the panel data results, the convergence to major parties is confirmed in both countries while the trend is more obvious in Taiwan once again. In short, we find the small parties in Taiwan have relative little room for competition, comparing with those in Japan, under new Mixed system. The formulation of two party system is quite noticeable in Taiwan.

Keywords

Mixed system
Japan House Election
Taiwan Legislative Election
strait-and split-ticket voting
voting stability and change
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