Explaining Voter Turnout in Taiwan Legislative Elections

Abstract

This paper specifies a dynamic model of voter turnout in Taiwan legislative elections using the generalized method of moments (GMM) model. We utilize data recorded over the 1998–2008 period, covering 23 counties of Taiwan. We find that previous levels of voter turnout are significantly associated with current levels of voter turnout. In particular, we provide strong evidence for a dynamic decline in voter turnout in Taiwan legislator elections. We also find that the perceived closeness of the election by the potential voters prior to the election, greater number of parties and densely populated areas, are significantly associated with higher voter turnout, whereas larger costs of voting, greater educational inequality and higher levels of education contribute to lower electoral participation. Further, population stability and disposable income have a limited impact on voter turnout.

Keywords:

• Taiwan
• legislative elections
• voter turnout
• panel GMM

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editor and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions. Chun Ping Chang is grateful to the National Science Council of Taiwan for financial support through grant NSC 98-2410-H-158-007. Any remaining errors are our own.

Notes

¹Taiwan has two election categories at the central government level: the presidential elections and legislator elections of office for presidents and members of the legislature.

²Similarly, Paolino (2005) investigates voter behavior in the 1996 Taiwan presidential election employing a nested logit model. Hsieh et al. (1998) and Paolino (2005) use survey data of 1396 respondents conducted by the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University.

³The counties are the highest ranking authorities below the national government because there are no states or administrative regions in Taiwan.

⁴The legislative term had been amended from three to four years in 2008.

⁵A considerable amount of literature has been devoted into explaining voter turnout in advanced industrial democracies (see, for example, Powell, 1986; Jackman & Miller, 1995; Endersby & Krieckhaus, 2008). However, the dynamic component of voter turnout in the recently transformed democracy (e.g. Taiwan), particularly at the sub-national level, has been largely undiscovered.

⁶More specifically, Denny & Doyle (2009) refer to these characteristics as ‘observed heterogeneity’.

⁷Green & Shachar (2000) and Denny & Doyle (2009) identify these factors as ‘unobserved heterogeneity’.

⁸For an extensive analysis on the measures of voter turnout, see Geys (2006).

⁹The data come from TVBS Poll Center, which is publicly available at http://www.tvbs.com.tw/news/news_poll.asp.

¹⁰Nevertheless, it is possible that there may be more districts in a more densely populated county.