Effects of a Two-Vote Mixed-Member Majoritarian System on Citizens’Voting Behavior in the Korean National Assembly Elections

Abstract

In the 2004 and 2008 National Assembly elections, each Korean voter was provided two ballots under a mixedmember majoritarian system. Drawing on post-election survey data, this paper investigates differences in the extent of regional voting, partisan voting, ideology voting, and retrospective voting across the two components of a general election. The paper also examines the patterns of split-ticket voting. The analysis reveals that regional voting more strongly influences the district candidate vote than the party vote. But partisan voting, ideology voting, and retrospective voting less strongly affect the former than the latter, respectively. In the 2008 election, about 40 percent of the total voting participants engaged in split-ticket voting. A bit more than half the total split-ticket voters chose a district candidate of the two large parties, and endorsed the party list filed by a small party. The most frequent case was the Grand National Party chosen for the district candidate vote along with the Pro-Park Coalition for the party vote. These ticket-splitters tended to vote sincerely under proportional representation, and vote strategically for the viable candidate to avoid wasting the district candidate vote.