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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.
Abstract
Spatial perspectives were seldom applied on the study of voting behavior in Taiwan in the past. However, the regional differentiation of voting behavior had been generally attended. Moreover, it would certainly dominate the division of Single-Member Districts and the eventual outcome. The authors attempt to explore spatial issues in electoral studies in this article. First, by defining spatial effects as spatial heterogeneity and spatial dependency, it could be then revealed how it influenced voting behavior. Secondly, indicators of spatial autocorrelation and the spatial regression model are introduced to explore and examine spatial effects. In the later half of the article, the 2004 Taiwan presidential election is taken as an empirical example to support three hypotheses: 1) similar voting are spatially clustered, in other words, voting are similar among neighboring communities; 2) residuals in the classical regression model exhibited regional differentiation that reveals spatial heterogeneity; 3) contiguous voters can still be affected even the social factors such as age, education, industry, income and ethnicity have been controlled (a revelation of the dominance of spatial dependence). The authors thus conclude that it shall always be taken into consideration regarding where the voters live.
Abstract
The issue of invalid votes receives few scholarly attentions. Many consider invalid votes as the result of unintended behavior and do not explore the factors that may influence the incidence of invalid votes. We examine 37 elections of different levels between 1992 and 2008 in Taiwan by using panel data analysis. We find that the distribution of invalid votes are not random but are influenced by institutional and socioeconomic factors. Regarding institutional factors, the elections codes, the complexity of elections, the importance of elections, and years after the democratic transition are the main influencing factors. Years of education, the percentage of elders, population density, and percentage of indigenous citizens are the main socioeconomic variables that affect the incidence of invalid votes. The two strings of factors can explain about 34% of the variance in invalid votes. In addition to the pooled OLS model, we also employ spatial lag model and spatial error model. The two models show that the distribution of invalid votes exhibit positive spatial autocorrelation. In addition, some areas also exhibit spatial heterogeneity, which is likely to be attributed to the alienation of voters in the districts. We might need to pay special attention to these areas to enhance the quality of democracy.
