Reinterpreting Split-Ticket Voting in South Korea’s 2004 Legislative Election

Abstract

What explains ticket-splitting in South Korea’s 2004 National Assembly election? While the mixed member systems literature generally focuses on strategic rationales to split ticketing, the role of contextual factors—in this case the impeachment of President Roh Moo-Hyun—remains largely unexplored. An analysis of Korea’s first two-vote mixed system election from 2004 finds that, besides traditional strategic voting, approval of Roh’s impeachment influenced strategic voting, but only among supporters of Roh’s own party, the Uri Party.