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It is widely believed that identity with Taiwanese or Chinese is the major cleavage in Taiwan. People who hold Taiwanese identity tend to vote for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and those who identify themselves as both Chinese and Taiwanese are likely to vote for the Kuomintang. As the proportion of Taiwanese identifiers increases, the geographical difference seems to persist. Whether national identity is associated with regional line and why they are correlated is a pressing question. This paper uses the 2012 presidential election survey data to explore the extent to which regional divide accounts for national identity. Using generalized linear mixed effect model (GLMM), this research finds minor regional divide in terms of ethnicity concentration and economic structure. However, ethnic background is influential on national identity while retrospective evaluation and democratic value are significant predictors. This mixed result suggests that people in Taiwan have united national identity should geographical difference remain or even decrease, and that we should remain watchful about the influence of democratic value and economic concern.

Conventional belief suggests that the ruling party in the 'single non-transferable voting' (SNTV) system can often coordinate legislative candidates through the allocation of resources, and previous research shows that both local factions and budget distribution influence the process of candidate coordination. Modeling the seat shares of the Kuomintang (KMT) in the 1992, 1995, 1998 and 2001 legislative elections, this article contends that the number of local factions and chairmen in parliament largely determines the KMT's seat gains. Evidence shows that the KMT was apt to coordinate candidates through the position of committee chairpersons in the Legislative Yuan, and its failure to do so in the 2001 election contributed to its fall.

Since 1986, Taiwan has entered an era of party competition and witnessed the flourishing of political parties in terms of the number of parties and their relative strength. We find that the vacillation in the proportion of nonpartisanship is remarkable before and after the relinquishing of KMT dominance in 2000. We argue that partisans may conceal their party attachment if their parties fail to live up to their expectations. The experience of the changing Taiwanese electorate has theoretical implications for other consolidating democracies, especially the eastern European countries that also had one single dominant party before regime change.

We propose, in this article, a model for multimember districts in which voting choice is a function of the product of relative benefits and the probability of breaking a tie between their preferred party and its trailing party. We transform people's perception of the parties' positions on specific issues in order to obtain the probability of each party winning. "Feeling thermometer" and "like/dislike" questions are employed to measure the perceived benefit that an individual might expect to receive from each party if elected. We test our model using the 1995, 1998, and 2001 legislative elections in Taiwan, simulating the level of closeness with logistic estimates. Based on the simulation, we identify four types of voting behavior: sincere, straightforward, irrational, and strategic. The study of these four types of voting behavior sheds light on party competition in Taiwan and provides models likely to be useful elsewhere as well.

The central issue in Taiwan's politics revolves around the island's relationship with China. The three major parties—the Kuomintang, Democratic Progressive Party, and Taiwan People's Party—take different positions on this, and their supporters align with these respective positions. However, there is a scarcity of research on the foreign policy inclinations of individuals who do not align with any political party. We find empirically that self-reported independents in Taiwan exhibit a preference for bandwagoning, driven by concerns for tangible material benefits; cultural similarity, economic interests, and the power dynamics between the US and China also play substantial roles here. These findings shed light on the unique role and dynamics of independents in Taiwan's political landscape. Our theoretical innovation lies in showing that in a democracy, different factors come into play in the formation of the foreign policy preferences of different groups.

ObjectivePrevious studies of public attitudes toward immigration have been set in economically developed areas such as the United States and the countries of Western Europe, implicitly applying the term "immigrants" solely to blue‐collar laborers. In this article, we extend the discussion to Taiwan, a newly democratic and nearly developed country in East Asia.MethodsOur study investigates public attitudes toward immigrants with different occupations and test predictions derived from both economic and cultural approaches.ResultsFrom an analysis of the survey data, we find different economic factors for pro‐immigration attitudes toward foreign professionals and laborers.ConclusionsSpecifically, people who have higher incomes are more likely to allow foreign professionals to become citizens, and people with positive assessments of national and individual economic conditions are more likely to favor the inflow of foreign workers. Furthermore, cultural tolerance and a high level of education are correlated to pro‐migration attitudes toward both foreign professionals and laborers.