Does a mixed-member majoritarian system lead to a party vote?

Abstract

One of the aims of the reform of the electoral system in 1994 was to increase the party vote. While the old system of multi-member districts with a single non-transferable vote promoted intra-party competition, the new system would encourage inter-party competition. The reformers expected Japanese electoral politics to become a party-oriented election. The analysis in this paper, however, shows that Japanese voters preferred a personal vote to a party vote in the 2012 general election. The results of a logistic regression analysis showed that the supporters of the Democratic Party of Japan and voters in districts where two parties competed tended toward the personal vote. The suggestion here is whether the voters who cast a personal vote are determined by not only the effect of the electoral system but also the evalu