Political Cycle of Voters` Understanding of the New Electoral System: the Case of Taiwan

Abstract

On 6 June 2005, the National Assembly in Taiwan ratified the constitutional amendment\r\nto cut the number of legislative seats from 225 to 113, to extend legislators’ terms of office\r\nfrom three years to four, and most importantly, to adopt a new mixed-member majoritarian\r\n(MMM) electoral system to replace the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) system for legislative\r\nelections.\r\n The election of the 7th Legislative Yuan on 12 January 2008, was the first instance of this\r\nnew mixed electoral system being practiced in Taiwan. Several scholars and political pundits\r\nhave examined the impacts of adopting the mixed-member majoritarian system. However, almost\r\nall assume voters were fully aware of the new two-ballot electoral system and made their\r\nchoices accordingly. The purpose of this paper is to question this assumption by exploring the\r\nvicissitude of voters’ knowledge of the new electoral rules and their determinants. This paper\r\nargues that most voters are ignorant of, and oblivious to, the changes in the electoral system.\r\nThat is, voters’ awareness of the electoral system is a function of legislative electoral cycle as\r\nwell as the efforts of political parties and candidates’ campaigns to maneuver the electorate and\r\ntake advantage of the new rule. If this notion is correct, the cycle of voters’ knowledge can be\r\nexpected to move in tandem with the electoral cycle. That is, voters become more and more\r\naware of the new electoral rules before the legislative election and then tend to forget about it\r\nduring the mid-term period. The awareness picks up again a few months before the next legislative\r\nelection is scheduled. We test this political cycle hypothesis by comparing the results\r\nfrom the five waves of pre-election rolling surveys during the late 2007 and two waves of postelection\r\nsurveys conducted in early 2010 and early 2011. We find that voters’ knowledge of the\r\nnew electoral system, including term of office, district magnitude, ballot structure and PR (Proportional\r\nRepresentation) threshold, indeed rose gradually during the campaigning period before\r\nthe 2008 legislative election. Then, with the exception of the office term, voters’\r\nknowledge of all the other three elements of the new electoral rules declined substantially after\r\nelection.