Patterns of Split-ticket Voting in the 2008 Korean General Election for the National Assembly.

For the second time since 2004, the Korean voters were provided two ballots each under a mixed member majoritarian system in the 2008 General Election for the National Assembly: one for choosing a candidate in the single-member plurality district, and the other for supporting a party according to a nationwide proportional representation system. Using the data from a post-election survey mainly and the relevant official election results complementarily, this paper investigates the patterns of Korean voters' split-ticket voting in which they do not straightly choose a district candidate together with the candidate's party across the plurality and proportional representation elections. To what extent did such split-ticket voting take place in the 2008 General Election? What kinds of voters were likely to do ticket splitting? What plausible reasons could one provide for explaining the patterns of split-ticket voting? What political consequences might have split-ticket voting behavior brought about? By delving into these questions, this study seeks to better understand the split-ticket voting behavior of the Korean electorate in particular as well as of the voters in general, under the two-vote mixed member majoritarian or proportional system ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]