During the 2024 Taiwan presidential election, the Kuomintang sought to influence voters’ behaviour using a strategy centred on war-based fear – but this strategy did not bring about electoral victory. This study employs affective intelligence theory to examine the outcome of this election. Using a multinomial logistic regression, this study analyses the effects of war-threat perception, candidate security perception, and their interaction on voting choice. The results indicate that candidate security perception significantly influenced support for a candidate: the higher people’s sense of security toward a candidate, the more likely they were to vote for that candidate. Furthermore, we found that war-threat perception yielded different outcomes for candidates emphasising a peace-oriented campaign strategy (the Kuomintang) and those emphasising a confrontation campaign strategy (the Democratic Progressive Party). For the peace-oriented candidate, the level of war-threat perception did not affect the support generated by candidate security perception. In contrast, for the confrontation-oriented candidate, an increase in war-threat perception diminished the support derived from candidate security perception. The implications of these findings are also discussed.

External factors have not received the scholarly attention they deserve in previous research on the independence–unification (IU) issue in Taiwan. This paper seeks to enhance our understanding of IU views in Taiwan by examining how the China factor affects Taiwanese individuals’ IU stances. The ‘China factor’ here is defined as Taiwanese people’s mainland China-related impressions and experiences. It is categorised into two types, corresponding to the affective and behavioural dimensions, respectively. Taking advantage of new panel data (i.e., TIGCR-PPS 2018–2022) and advanced statistical techniques (i.e., within-between random effects modelling), this study finds that two dimensions of the China factor exhibit strong explanatory power for IU views, even after controlling for the determinants emphasised in existing studies. Taiwanese people’s impressions of mainland China exert both short- and long-term effects on their IU views, whereas visits to mainland China have a long-term effect. Specifically, more favourable impressions of mainland China and prior travel experiences there are associated with a lower likelihood of supporting Taiwan independence. These findings build on existing research and suggest several avenues for future research.

This study proposes an integrative typology of popular support for democracy by combining acceptance of democracy, rejection of authoritarianism, and understanding of democracy. Applying the typology to waves 5 (2005–2008) and 7 (2017–2022) of the World Values Survey, the study reassesses the cultural legitimacy of democracy across 30 countries in five regions. Empirically, it reveals that public support for democracy has significantly weakened over the last two decades, especially in non-Western countries. Analytically, it shows that additional qualifications for democratic citizenship demonstrate relations between citizens’ support for democracy and the level of liberal democracy, partially confirming the congruence thesis of political culture. Substantially, these results suggest that democratic backsliding and authoritarian change are more severe and rapid in non-Western countries than in Western democracies.

This paper investigates the contamination effect in Japan’s mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) electoral system by examining whether the presence of a party’s candidate in a single-member district (SMD) increases its vote share in the proportional representation (PR) tier. While mixed systems are designed to combine the benefits of majoritarian and proportional rules, scholars have debated whether these systems operate independently across tiers or whether contamination occurs. Using panel data from Diet elections in Japan between 2013 and 2025, I analyse how the changing candidacy status for Japanese parties impacted their PR vote share. The results from propensity score-weighted two-way fixed effects models indicate a significant contamination effect for some parties: minor parties tend to gain higher PR vote shares in districts where they field SMD candidates, creating incentives to nominate non-viable candidates. Also, candidates with prior political or professional experience were more effective in boosting their party’s PR vote share. This study highlights how the interplay between tiers in MMM systems affects party strategies and disproportionality, and underscores the strategic dilemma faced by parties under Japan’s increasingly fragmented party system.

While studies based on the civic voluntarism model generally suggest that stronger party identification increases electoral participation, other studies report mixed findings on the relationship between partisan strength and voter turnout. This study argues that the participatory effect of party identification depends on whether voters’ partisan identity is consistent with the party affiliation of their preferred candidate. Drawing on conflicted voter theory, we argue that when voters identify with one party but prefer a candidate nominated by another party, the psychological costs generated by betrayal aversion reduce their likelihood of voting. Using pooled survey data from the Taiwan Election and Democratization Study (TEDS) for Taiwan’s presidential elections from 2008 to 2024, our binary logistic regression results support this argument. This study contributes to the literature by showing that conflicted voter status should be incorporated into future studies of voter turnout. It also suggests that political parties should pay closer attention to conflicted voters in closely contested elections, because turnout differences within a small segment of the electorate can have notable political consequences.

The impact of politically irrelevant events on government responsibility attribution and political support has long intrigued political science scholars. This study examines whether non-political events cause attribution errors, focusing on the dramatic victories of Japanese athletes winning their first and second gold medals in judo, a key Olympic sport for Japan. Using data from 1,347 Japanese participants surveyed before and after these victories, we estimate the sharp average treatment effect and conduct extensive robustness checks, including unexpected events during survey design (UESD). Our findings indicate that these medal victories had no measurable effect on political support, suggesting that voters can differentiate between external sporting successes and political accountability. These results underscore the context-specific nature of how such events influence political attitudes.