Taiwan Electorates’ Economic Voting Behavior

According to the dominant important hypotheses of economic voting theory,“retrospective voting”,“prospective voting”, the voter observes the economy, judgeits performance and alter his or her vote accordingly, in good economic times votersreward incumbent while in bad economic times they punish incumbent, and also,votes will select the candidate who will bring the most economic benefits for them. Inaccordance with the other two important hypotheses,“pocketbook voting” and“sociotropic voting”, voters can be both egotropic and sociotropic: eitherpersonal/household or social/country economic conditions will affect their votes.In the past “presidential” elections, party identification, unification-independenceissue, candidate’s personal “charisma” and electorates’ personal factor all had a greatinfluence on voting behavior, and since the2008“presidential” elections, the effect ofeconomic factor has been revealed. With the statistics of Taiwan public opinion poll,this thesis will focus on Taiwan electorates’ economic voting behavior in2008and2012“presidential” elections and analyze two assumptions: one is Taiwan electoratesrewarded the incumbent for the economic conditions they welcome and punish theincumbent for the economic conditions they dislike; the other one is Taiwanelectorates vote for the candidate whose policy would bring economic benefits forthem. The conclusion shows that the first assumption is valid while the second one isnot, furthermore, Taiwan electorates punish economic downturn more than theyreward economic upturn. Meanwhile, it is found that cross-strait economiccooperation have affected Taiwan electorates’ attitudes towards cross-strait relations,therefore, to some extent, economic factor have produced an effect on Taiwanelectorates’ voting behavior and will affect Taiwan regional elections eventually.