Examining Strategic Voting in Single-Member Districts A Case Study of the 2006 Taipei City Mayoral Election

• Published in: Japanese Journal of Electoral Studies Vol. 23; pp. 101 - 111
• Main Authors: Tsai, Chia-hung, Yu, Ching-hsin, Huang, Chi, Chen, Lu-huei, Cheng, Su-feng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Japanese Association of Electoral Studies 2008
• ISSN: 0912-3512; 1884-0353
• DOI: 10.14854/jaes1986.23.101

One of the important features of the 2006 Taipei City mayoral election is that there were three likely candidates. Each of them represented one of the major parties. The conventional wisdom states that the electorate may vote for their second preferred candidate if their most favorite one is not likely to win. However, scholars have seldom empirically examined how individuals rank their alternatives or candidates. We consider people's voting intention as a preference ordering and manage to examine its determinants. We set up choice-specific variables, such as winner anticipation, partisanship, and candidate evaluations, and individual-specific variables, such as ethnic background and nation identity, to account for people's preference ordering. Appling conditional logit model to a pre-election poll, we find that people rank their preferences according to their evaluations on candidates in order. Voter's winner anticipation and party identification prevailed in our model but they affect the voter's choice in different ways.