Abstract
This article attempts to offer a new answer to the traditional question of how people vote, by shedding light on voter attitude toward risk. A change in government leadership often results in drastic policy changes, which subsequently lead to economic instability. Therefore, risk-averse voters who are afraid of such instability do not support or vote for the opposition parties, but stay with the ruling party or abstain, even when they are dissatisfied with the ruling party, while risk-acceptant voters are willing to support or vote for the opposition parties. The findings from multinomial logit analysis of the 2012 Japanese Election Study V (JESV) are generally supportive of this hypothesis in that risk-acceptant voters who supported the DPJ in 2009 were more likely to switch their vote to the LDP or Ishin in 2012, and less likely to stay with the DPJ, even after controlling for party support and economic perception.
