Partisan voters in party systems with ephemeral parties: Evidence from South Korea

In this article, we examine how voters make decisions about electoral candidates in an under-institutionalized party system. In such a context, parties are expected to be less rooted in society, with fewer programmatic linkages to particular groups. Thus, voters are considered less likely to vote for candidates based on their policy positions and are expected to have less consistent policy preferences. Instead, it is assumed that individual candidate characteristics are more important. Using a conjoint survey experiment conducted in South Korea, a crucial case of a weak party system in a relatively new but consolidated democracy, we examine how voters are motivated by individual candidate characters and domestic policy and foreign policy positions. Our results show that individual characteristics matter, but we also find strong evidence of consistent policy preferences, especially in the foreign policy domain. We demonstrate high levels of programmatic partisanship – voters who are partisans informed about and primarily motivated by policy positions.