This study investigates the voting behavior of Korean the electorate using Dalton’s four concepts of contemporary voters. We demonstrate that cognitive partisans, who possess strong party identification and high levels of cognitive skills, respond to regional party cue and ideology when voting. Ritual partisans and cognitive partisans behave alike but, for ritual partisans, ideology plays a diminished role due to their low cognitive skills. Two independent groups—apartisans and apoliticals—are prone to swing votes from election to election. Unlike apoliticals, apartisans are influenced by ideology as they possess higher levels of cognitive abilities. Our findings suggest that Dalton’s framework can be useful to understand voting patterns of electorates in new democracies as well as advanced democracies.
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