선거 당일 날씨와 정당 투표 [Election-day Weather and Party Votes].

This paper analyzes the election-day weather effects on turnout and electoral outcomes in South Korea. Existing studies on the importance of election-day weather from developed western democracies generally consider poor weather an additional cost in the voting calculus, which reduces turnout. In this paper, I claim that we need to take the opportunity cost of voting into account in the country like South Korea, where an election-day is designated as a special holiday. Voters who plan leisure activities on the election-day are more likely to turn out in bad weather than in good weather. Given that young people often have stronger preference to leisure activities and affinities with liberal parties, moreover, bad weather in an election-day results in more favorable electoral outcomes to liberal parties than conservative parties. An analysis of three legislative elections since 2004 shows that rainfall increases the number of votes for liberal parties, but decreases the number of votes for conservative parties. However, rainfall does not produce any significant change in turnout because the changes in votes between liberal parties and conservatives parties cancel out each other.