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Abstract
Since the direct presidential election was held in Taiwan 12 years ago, for the first time a significant voting gender gap appeared in the 2008 presidential election. Women voters supported candidate Ma which boosted him winning the president election. This study attempts to explore why there was such a substantial gender gap in that election. To explain the gender gap, we first compared the factors in explaining voting decision-candidate evaluation, issue positions, socioeconomic factors, and party identification, to see if gender gap exists in these factors. Furthermore, we applied the logit models to examine whether gender differences in these factors lead to voting gender gap. The models show that although gender gaps were evident on voters' candidate evaluation, party identification, some issue positions and socioeconomic conditions, not all of these differences translated into voting gender gaps. Gender differences in party identification remained the strongest factor in explaining gender difference in voting choices. Comparatively, the voting gender gap caused by party identification is evident in that women were less likely to identify with pan-Green party, and pan-Green women might vote across their party line. We further examine respectively the interaction between voters' party identification and candidate factor, and the interaction between voters' party identification and issue evaluation. The results show that candidate factor is not the underlying factor linking the gender gap in party identification and voting gender gap. But the distance of issue positions between voters and parties/candidates on social welfare and environment might explain why women voters identify differently from men with parties and how these differences transfer into voting gender gaps.
Abstract
In 2008 presidential election, Taiwan for the first time appeared a significant gender gap in voting; in 2012 presidential election, the first female presidential candidate arose to challenge the incumbent. To compare the changes between these two elections, this study uses ”Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study (TEDS)” panel data (2008P-2012) to observe the stability/change and the patterns of gender gap among the same set of voters. The analysis shows that women voters are more likely than men to change their votes from the KMT candidate to the DPP candidate. The transferring pattern of women voters accounts for the shrink of the voting gender gap comparing to the last election. In terms of the explanation for the voting change, we compare three factors, the party identification, candidate evaluation and issue effect. All of these three factors affect voting decisions to different extent, but in explaining gender difference of the voting change, only the candidate factor is significant. Voting change is mainly due to the female voters with stable party identification, transferring their votes from the KMT to DPP candidate. Among those female voters, some of them are stable DPP supporters who voted for Ma in the 2008 election and returned to vote for DPP candidate Tsai, and still some are stable KMT supporters who cross their party line to vote for their preferred DPP candidate Tsai. Comparing these two presidential elections with panel data, we can conclude that men are more likely to stick to their party identification in casting their ballots, whereas women are more likely to be influenced by other factors besides party identification. And this time, the other factor is the candidate. For those female voters who give the DPP candidate higher evaluation, voting transfer is a natural result.
