In recent years, the impact of party leaders on voting behavior has attracted increasing attention, leading some scholars to identify a phenomenon of ‘presidentialization’. Many extant studies of this topic in Japan are limited to one or two electoral cycles. In order to trace long-term trends, this paper analyses longitudinal survey data to investigate the existence and magnitude of the effect party leader evaluations exert on vote choice in Japan. Empirical results show that while only dominant and forceful personalities substantially (...) influenced voters' likelihood of supporting their parties in the 1980s and 1990s, by the 2000s assessments of most major party leaders had a significant impact on their parties' electoral performance. In short, party leaders affect vote choice due not to their personalities, but instead to the position they hold. We also test the hypotheses that the association between leader appraisal and voting behavior would be particularly conspicuous among voters who lack party identification and those who are most heavily exposed to media reportage. Analysis reveals that independent voters are not more likely to vote on the basis of leader evaluations than partisans; a leader effect is found more frequently among voters with greater exposure to election coverage on television. (shrink)

Both general publics and elites have long used labels of left and right as cues for political communication and vote choice in Western democracies. This study examines the utility of these spatial semantics as means of encapsulating major political cleavages in East Asian democracies. Through analysis of public opinion surveys, we investigate the influence of organizational affiliation; views on socio-economic, religious, and issues, as well as attitudes toward the political system, as anchors of public understanding of the leftWestern leftright scale (...) in South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan, left level of ideological conceptualization are likely related to party system development and democratic experience. (shrink)

The delineation of constituency boundaries and variations in vote distribution across districts often favor certain parties at the expense of others. Applying a hitherto under-utilized formula (Brookes, 1959; Johnston et al., 1999), this study investigates whether the mechanism translating votes into seats in Japan's single-member districts results in systematic partisan advantage that may influence election outcomes. Simulations are conducted for the 2003 and 2005 general elections under two scenarios: where the governing coalition and the main opposition party receive equal vote (...) shares, and where their vote shares are reversed from the actual results. Components of electoral bias are then disaggregated into size and distribution effects, and the impact of malapportionment, electorate size, turnout, and the role of third party/independent candidates on overall electoral bias is examined. Results show that while partisan bias exists, disadvantages toward one party in some components are likely to cancel out benefits derived from others, producing a relatively small net effect. Furthermore, electoral bias in Japan is found to award sectoral rather than partisan seat bonuses. (shrink)