“Voting Realignment in New Democracies: Uncovering the Micro-foundation of Two-Turnover Test” Under revision ( September 2005 )

Abstract

Huntington’s path-breaking notion of the “two-turnover test” is considered one of the most important criterions in evaluating whether a new democracy is consolidated. However, little is known about the driving forces that lead to the “two-turnover” in new democracies. This paper seeks to fill this vacuum and investigate a very basic yet important question: “under what circumstances do voters in new democracies deviate from their previous voting pattern?” That is, I ask why either supporters of the incumbent penalize the ruling party by shifting votes to the opposition, or supporters of the opposition abandon their initial choice and turn to the incumbent. Utilizing survey data from the 2004 Taiwanese presidential election, this paper finds that voting realignment is most likely to occur among ideologically moderate voters, and is performance-driven. The finding remains robust even after controlling for issue voting and election-specific events that are peculiar to the 2004 Taiwanese presidential election.