學者對於國內選舉會引導候選人提出衝突性質或和平取向的對外政策，仍然沒有一致的看法。從1996年至2008年，臺灣在總統大選之前的一段時期內都出現過對中國大陸具有衝突傾向的行動，不過本文以敘述統計法發現，這一模式並沒有發生在2012年的總統大選競選時期之內。本文嘗試以「國際」、「國內」、以及「個人」這三個分析層次來解釋，為何2012年臺灣兩大政黨候選人在總統大選之前都提出和平取向的對中國政策。經由對訪談資料及既有文字資料之分析，本文認為雖然國際層次裡的美國與中國態度，以及國內層次中「維持現狀」的民意、還有兩位候選人分別是「競選連任者」及「挑戰現任者」，這些因素對於兩位候選人的對中國政策方向都能產生制約作用，但使他們提出和平取向的中國政策的最主要作用因素，是屬於候選人個人層次的意識形態與個性。這一解釋也補充了相關文獻僅指出「民意」與「任期限制」等兩因素的不足。

Scholars still do not reach any agreement on whether domestic elections will lead to a conflictual foreign policy or a peaceful one. From 1996 to 2008, Taiwan tended to act conflictually toward Mainland China during the period ahead of presidential elections. However, the results of descriptive statistics in this article finds that this pattern did not occur in Taiwan's 2012 presidential election. This article attempts to apply a three-level-of-analysis framework, i.e. "the international level," "the domestic level," and "the individual level," to explain why both candidates from Taiwan's two major political parties proposed peaceful China policies in their campaigns. Through the analysis of qualitative data collected from interviews and documents, this paper argues that although the two presidential candidates' China-policy making were restrained by the attitudes of the United States and China at the international level, as well as the public opinion of "maintaining the status quo" and the two candidates' roles as the "re-election seeker" and the "challenger" respectively at the domestic level, the most important factors that drove the two candidates' peaceful China policy were ideology and personality at the individual level. This explanation also contributes to the previous literature which only emphasizes the factors of public opinion and leaders' term limits.