Examining the ‘Midterm Loss’in Taiwan: An Analysis of the 2009 County Magistrate Election

Abstract

Abstract: This paper regards Taiwan’s 2009 local (i.e., county magistrate) election as a kind of\r\nmidterm election and explains why the ruling party Kuomintang (KMT) got defeated by the opposition\r\nDemocratic Progressive Party (DPP) from two theoretical perspectives—namely, the\r\n“lack of mobilization” theory and the “swing voter” theory. By using both aggregate-level voting\r\nrecords and individual-level survey data, our empirical findings are three-fold: first, in general,\r\nthe DPP successfully mobilized their supporters to get out to voting in the 2009 local\r\nelection while the KMT failed to do so. Second, previous KMT supporters in the 2008 presidential\r\nelection were somehow reluctant to continuously support KMT candidates in the 2009\r\nlocal election. Specifically, in the KMT advantageous county, such as Taoyuan County, previous\r\nKMT supporters were less likely to turn out to vote than those previous DPP supporters. On\r\nthe other hand, in the DPP advantageous county, such as Yunlin County, a significant proportion\r\nof previous KMT supporters actually turned out to vote for the DPP incumbent candidate.\r\nThird, The conventional wisdom suggests that the performance of the ruling party usually becomes\r\nan important factor that affects voting behavior in midterm elections. Our analysis partially\r\nconfirms such “referendum voting model” in the sense that some Taiwanese voters,\r\nparticularly those who voted for the ruling party in the previous national election, may took\r\ninto account the performance of the central government when casting their votes in the next\r\nelection, even if it was just a local-level election.