Split-Ticket Voting under the Mixed Electoral System

Abstract

Many of existing studies discuss why several voters split their tickets. The main stream argument which explains this phenomenon is rational choice model. This model assumed split ticket voter expect to achieve their ideal policies or to divided the power into different political blanches vote for different party in President and Congress election. However, under the mixed electoral system with bicameral system, it is difficult to explain the split ticket is the result of the rational and strategic choice of voters. The reason is that strategic voter in Japan split their ticket into HoR and HoC to keep the balance of policy outcome and political balance.

The main finding of this paper is that Japanese voter split their ticket when(1) for ruling party supporters, the evaluation of ruling party performances is low,(2) for opposition party supporters, the evaluation of ruling party performances is high. The empirical analysis supported our expectations.