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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 ) .
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%.
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.
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.
Abstract
This study explores the changes in voters’ choices due to the delayed voting in the 2018 Taipei City mayoral election. During the election, the incumbent mayor, Wen-je Ko, faced strong challenges from Shou-chung Ting (Kuomintang) and Pasuya Yao (Democratic Progressive Party). When voting stations started to count votes at 4 pm, most news channels reported an extremely tight race between Ko and Ting. The final election outcome was a narrow-margined win for Ko. For Shou-chung Ting, the outcome was very controversial, as this election was held concurrently with a referendum and hence the voting time was seriously delayed. A substantial proportion of voters cast their votes after 4 pm, already aware of the results of other voting stations from news reports. This information was likely to lead to changes in voters’ choices, resulting in further strategic voting and changes in the final outcome of the election. In order to examine Ting’s argument, this paper collects the election results of each voting station and the registration time after the counting was completed and published by the Central Election Commission. Through spatial regressions (SLM and SEM) and geographic weighted regression (GWR), we find that at the village level, some votes indeed flowed. However, at the city level, Shou-chung Ting’s concern has no empirical support. The overall impact of the delayed voting on the three candidates was insignificant.
