Public opinion polls sometimes overestimate the majority and underestimate the minority, such as Taipei and Kaohsiung Mayoral Election of 2006. On one hand the study is based on spiral of silence theory to analyze the phenomenon, and on the other it tries to explore the other factors that may affect the voters¡¦ willingness to express opinion in Taipei and Kaohsiung city. According to findings, social integration effect isn¡¦t a main factor to affect people¡¦s willingness to express opinion in Taipei and Kaohsiung city. On the contrary, people¡¦s level of interpersonal communication, political efficacy and education in Taipei and interpersonal communication, political participation, political confidence and political efficacy in Kaohsiung city are important factors to increase people¡¦s willingness to express opinion. In addition, the study uses interactive variables to go a step further to explore social integration effect. The results show that the spiral of silence effect supports voters¡¦ behavior in Kaohsiung city, but doesn¡¦t in Taipei city.

There is a current widespread knowledge about what factors that is of importance when explaining levels of individuals political trust. Unfortunately, the same knowledge is not at hand as to whether these ‘determinants’ of political have changed over time and if so how? In other words, can we assume that citizens form their trust in similar matters over time or has there been a shift? With the purpose of contributing to new knowledge about political trust, this thesis mainly explored if there has been a change in the effects of often argued to be strong determinants on political trust and secondly if there are any trends as to how these effects has changed over time. In order to realize answers to these most likely never posed questions, the theoretical framework departed from Mishler and Rose’s sectioning of cultural and institutional theory which entail very different views on the origin and dynamic of political trust. Later the two theories were operationalized into cultural and institutional related variables in accordance to available variables found in “The SOM Institute Cumulative Dataset 1986-2019”. Through numerous multiple linear regression analyses utilizing Swedish data between 1998 and 2019 it shows that the effect of most explanatory variables on political trust changes, but since these effects were small from the start there are reasons to question what weight the changes are carrying. Onwards, by performing interaction analyses the thesis was able to conclude a handful of positive and negative linear trends arching over the 22-year period meaning that some explanatory variables have become increasingly and decreasingly important when explaining the variation in political trust, which in turn indicates that the Swedish population on average tends to form their trust slightly different in 2019 as opposed to in 1998.