A Changing Political System and Electoral Behavior: an Analysis of the1993 Election of the County Magistrate and the City Mayor

Non-platform orientation includes candidate orientation, relationship orientation, and the personal preferences of each voter. Candidate orientation encompasses a candidate\'s personality type, past achievements, education, career, family, etc. Relationship orientation includes a personal network, a social network, and a political network.

Our past research showed that voters based their decisions on personal, psychological, and external factors. We listed seven factors in our analyticalframework:(1)citizen responsibility(2)political trust and efficacy (3)instrumental voting orientation(4)party mobilization (5) effect of primary group (6)effect of secondary group (7)candidate\'s exhortation. 2. Non-voting behavior.

In our analytical framework, we divided the reasons for not voting into two categories. The first set are objective factors which include: (1) health constraints such as illness or physical incapacity (2)natural environmental constraints such as natural disasters and long distances between home and the polling stations (3)social constraints such as pressure from social groups. The second set are subjective factors which include: (1) political distrust-the non-voter didn\'t believe that the electoral system could recruit good candidates or the elected candidate will be ineffective (2)political alienation-the non-voter felt political affairs were too complex leading to psychological evasion, or didn\'t discuss politics and therefore decided not to vote (3)low efficacy-the non-voter didn\'t think he or she could influence the performance of politicians or the government by voting, so he or she decided not to vote.

This research survey focuses on the electorates of Taipei county and Taichung county. We used the multiple-stage sampling method which encompasses probabilities proportional to size (PPS), combined stratified sampling, systematic sampling, and double sampling in order to take advantage of the distinct benefits derived from each method.