• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.35-71
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to verify the effect of electoral competition on voters deciding on strategic split-ticket voting under the mixed-member electoral system. As result, the more competitive the constituencies are, the more voters choose to vote for the major parties. The results of logistic regression analysis including interaction terms showed that the more competitive the constituencies are, the more voters choose for candidates from the major parties. Also, the finding shows that major party supporters are less affected by electoral competition than minor party supporters in choosing a candidate in the single-seat districts. In the case of minor party supporters, the more competitive the constituencies were, the more likely they were to choose the major party candidate instead of the minor party candidate. Based on these results, it can be inferred that voters are affected by the presence or behavior of other voters in local constituencies under the first-past-the-post rule. Because of the psychology of not wanting their votes to be useless, voters cast their ballots more strategically as the competition in constituencies intensifies, and as the competition in constituencies slackens, such tendencies weaken, and this trait is particularly evident among minor party supporters.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.718-734
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• 2012

This study investigates the interference of politics of regional cleavage in the redistricting for national assembly election and its effects on gerrymandering and malapportionment. Since the Constitutional Assembly election, the argument about gerrymandering and malapportionment continues and the single-member election district with simple plurality system in Korea has aggravated the problem of cleavage and unfairness. Especially, redistrictings for national assembly election in 2008 and 2012 are suspected of gerrymandering by Saenuri party and Democratic United party. Yeongnam region where Saenuri party is dominant and Honam region where Democratic United party is, are over-represented compared to population, while the districts in Gyeonggi-do are under-represented and the need for increasing the number of districts has been ignored. These redistrictings might come from unfair and collusive interference of politics of regional cleavage, and consequently malapportionment has been brought about.