On December 20, amid shouting, shoving, fistfights, and broken furniture, Taiwan’s opposition-controlled legislature passed by a show of hands three controversial bills that threaten to kneecap its government. The first raised the threshold to recall elected officials. The second required the Constitutional Court to have a 2/3 quorum to hear constitutional cases and imposed a supermajority threshold to invalidate a law. And the third shifted the central-local revenue-sharing formula to give local governments (mostly KMT-run) 40 percent of all government revenues, up from 25 percent, at the expense of the DPP-run central government.
​
Four days later, the same opposition majority in the legislature voted down all seven of President Lai’s nominees to the Constitutional Court, leaving it with only eight justices and unable to meet the new quorum requirement for hearing a case. It is now effectively paralyzed. The DPP government has nevertheless requested that the court meet and rule anyway on whether the amendments to the Constitutional Court Act are themselves unconstitutional. This increasingly destructive partisan political conflict has put Taiwan on the brink of a constitutional crisis with no obvious way to resolve it. 

This confrontation is also taking place in a democracy that Freedom House last year ranked as the second-best in Asia, behind only Japan, and significantly above the United States and most of Europe. Taiwan's political system has proven remarkably resilient to PRC influence operations over many years, and it has a capable and effective state and vibrant economy despite its diplomatic isolation. So why is it facing a political crisis now?

​The simplest answer is divided government. For the first time in 16 years (and only the second time in its democratic history), Taiwan's legislative and executive branches are controlled by different parties: the Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People's Party (TPP) together hold a majority in the Legislative Yuan, and they are locked in a fierce power struggle with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government.  

This conflict was not inevitable. In the January 2024 presidential and legislative elections, the DPP's Lai Ching-te (賴清德) won the presidential election but with only 40% of the vote, and the DPP lost its majority in the legislature. The KMT ended up with 52 seats (plus two blue-leaning independents), the DPP won 51, and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je's (柯文哲) centrist TPP won eight (all via the party list vote). That left no party with a majority and made the TPP the crucial swing voting bloc in the LY. In theory, the TPP could have exploited that leverage to extract significant concessions from the ruling DPP -- on policy, legislative leadership, or cabinet positions. But instead, negotiations between the DPP and TPP went nowhere, and President Lai missed his chance to head off the last year of partisan warfare.   

The formation of battle lines first became apparent on February 1, when the new legislature was seated. Its first order of business was to elect a speaker and deputy speaker. Curiously, the TPP  ultimately decided not to support either of the major party nominees -- the party's eight legislators voted for TPP member Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) in the first round, and abstained in the second.  As a result, the KMT's Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) won the speaker's race, and KMT legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) was elected as his deputy. Despite providing crucial help to the KMT, the TPP did not manage to win even the deputy speaker as the price for their support. Nor did they strike a deal with the DPP, either, although that should have secured at least one of the leadership positions for the party. Given that the TPP held the crucial votes that could have denied control of the legislature to either major party, this outcome seems like a major missed opportunity for both them and the DPP. 

I've heard competing explanations for this bargaining failure. One story is that the refusal came from the DPP side -- ruling party legislators were engaged in quiet conversations with the TPP about a possible power-sharing deal, but Lai Ching-te intervened to stop the negotiations. Reporting at the time suggested that the TPP's price for cooperation in the run-up to February 1 was for the DPP to support Huang Shan-shan for speaker -- a price the DPP was apparently not willing to pay, but which in hindsight they probably should have. That interpretation is also consistent with the public comments offered by party caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) that "A DPP-TPP partnership is only possible if the TPP voluntarily comes to us."​So maybe this was a strategic mistake by the DPP caucus (and ultimately, Lai himself), and they are suffering the consequences. 

But another possibility is that the TPP was just never seriously interested in cooperating with the DPP no matter what they offered -- even before  Ko Wen-je's detention in a corruption investigation several months later turbocharged the TPP's animosity toward the DPP government. Although the KMT-TPP negotiations for a joint presidential ticket broke down in spectacular public fashion in November 2023, the two parties did still enter into a pre-election coalition for the legislative races and even campaigned together, so perhaps TPP leaders had already made up their minds to team up with the KMT after the elections, too, and there really was no chance the DPP could have enticed them to defect.  

Whatever the reason, ever since the new legislature was seated on February 1, the TPP has consistently chosen to act as the KMT's junior partner and supported the opposition party's confrontational approach to the DPP government. And as the partisan divide has hardened, it has also transformed into an inter-branch conflict between the KMT-TPP majority in the legislature and the DPP in the executive. The partisan maneuvering that has followed has escalated over the last year to a level of open political warfare that is posing a severe test for Taiwan's democratic institutions. And it is a test they are failing.

​KMT: Renominated incumbent mayor Huang Min-hui (黃敏惠).
DPP: Nominated former legislator and deputy mayor Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) on June 28. 
Others: Four independents, including the novelty candidate formerly known as Huang Hong-cheng (黃宏成).
T-PVI: G+4
​Notes:

• Huang is a rare bird: a popular KMT mayor of a green city. How, you might ask? Her father was Huang Yung-chin (黃永欽), a long-time Taiwan Provincial Assembly member and the head of the leading faction in both the city and the county. The conventional story is that she inherited his long-standing networks and has maintained them. That has given her deep political influence which extends across the green-blue divide. She also served two previous terms as Chiayi City mayor, from 2005-2014. 
• Lee Chun-yi held the Chiayi City seat in the legislature for two terms (2012-2020), but lost the DPP's primary in 2019 to Wang Mei-hui (王美惠), who is now the legislator for Chiayi (not to be confused with Huang Min-hui the mayor). Lee then became a deputy secretary-general of the Presidential Office, which has become a place where losing candidates in good standing with Tsai Ing-wen go to have something to do for awhile. Lee has now been sent back down to Chiayi to challenge Wang.
• Update 9.2. The writer formerly known as Huang Hong-cheng (黃宏成) is a perennial candidate who's most well-known for changing his name multiple times. He was originally reported to be planning to run in Hualien race but registered here instead. The election deposit for the county/city mayor's races is NT$200,000, or about US$6300 at current exchange rates, which candidates forfeit if they do not win at least 1/10 of the winner's vote share. That makes running for office a fairly expensive hobby, and is one reason that Taiwan has fewer novelty candidates than, say, the UK, where in a fine British tradition Boris Johnson had to appear on stage with Lord Buckethead and Elmo to hear his constituency win announced.  
• Update 11.3. This race has been suspended and rescheduled for December 18! One of the minor candidates, Huang Shao-tsung (黃紹聰), died suddenly on Wednesday. According to the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act, Article 30, if a candidate dies after the registration deadline but before Election Day, the CEC must pause the election and restart the process of registration, drawing numbers, reprinting ballots, and so forth.
• This suspension clause in Taiwan's election law has apparently been informally called the "anti-assassination clause" -- I don't know the history here but am now intrigued...I also don't know how common this kind of provision is around the world. In the US, the election would typically still be held as scheduled, although like everything else in US elections, the practice varies depending on state vs federal law and across the states, and it often ends up decided by a court ruling, as this recent case in Minnesota demonstrates. (For comparison, here's Kentucky's procedure: votes for a dead candidate simply won't be counted; versus Texas: votes are counted, and if the deceased candidate wins, the resulting "vacancy" is filled "in the regular manner," either appointment or by-election.) 
• Both Huang Min-hui and Lee Chun-yi are unhappy with the postponement. The danger for Huang is that the separate, later date makes her a bigger target for the DPP. She's also the candidate in the lead and wants to avoid anything that would shake up the race...like a postponement. The law gives the CEC a lot of discretion here to decide how to reschedule the election process; they've decided to prioritize sticking to the normal timeline rather than rushing to complete registration, drawing of lots for ballot order, and ballot reprinting in the next 23 days. In my view that's probably the right decision, although it's likely to affect turnout in this race (keep in mind the local councilors and ward  chief elections in Chiayi City will all still be held on Nov. 26 alongside the constitutional referendum). 

Polls: 

• 2022.10.18-22: RWNews is publishing polling results for a lot of the second-tier races, including Chiayi City. Results here come in in line with my priors: they show the KMT's Huang leading the DPP's Lee, 58-27%. I'm unfamiliar with RWNews's track record, but they are using an online poll that NTU professor Chang Yu-tsung organized, and they do provide a fairly detailed description of the sampling method. The poll is weighted by sex, age, and location of residence (but not education?). Chang is part of the Asiabarometer survey team at Tai-Da and knows what he's doing, so I'm going to include these results where they're available.

Rating: Likely KMT. Huang consistently ranks at or near the top of popularity ratings of all of Taiwan's mayors and magistrates, and her place at the center of the Huang faction's networks puts her in a strong position to win despite being a KMT mayor in a G+4 city. Lee is a decent candidate who is well-known to the Chiayi electorate already, but he has an uphill battle here.

Result: KMT hold. Huang Min-hui wins, 63.8-35.0%. 
​  

KMT: Nominated former legislator Wang Yu-min (also known as Alicia Wang 王育敏) on August 3. 
DPP: Renominated incumbent Weng Chang-liang (翁章梁). 
Others: None.
T-PVI: G+8
Notes: 

• Weng won this office easily in 2018, a very bad year for the DPP nationally, and his approval ratings have been among the highest of all local executives for his first term. His real challenge was in the primary; he's part of legislator and former executive Chen Ming-wen's (陳明文) faction in the county, and he defeated the rival Chang faction's nominee, county speaker Chang Ming-ta (張明達).
• Wang is a protege of former president Ma Ying-jeou and was appointed the first executive director of the Ma Ying-jeou Cultural Foundation in 2018. She entered the legislature in 2012 as a party list legislator; in 2016 her #12 ranking was high enough to keep her there for another term. 
• Wang looks like a sacrificial lamb here; her main qualification seems to be that she was born in the county. 

Polls: 

• 2022.10.18-22: RWNews online poll finds Weng leading Wang, 48-32%. Weng coming in a bit below expectations here but still safely in the lead.  

​Rating: Safe DPP. Weng's popularity in deep green Chiayi County, and the lack of a challenger from other factions, makes him a prohibitive favorite for reelection. 

Result: DPP hold. Weng Chang-liang wins, 62.9-37.1%

KMT: Renominated incumbent Chang Li-shan (張麗善).
DPP: Nominated legislator Liu Chien-kuo (劉建國) on April 27. ​
Others: One minor candidate, Lin Chia-yu (林佳瑜).  
T-PVI: G+6
Notes:

• ​Chang is part of the most powerful political family in Yunlin, the Chang family. Her older brother Chang Jung-wei (張榮味) won two terms as Yunlin County magistrate, in 1999 and 2001. He was convicted of vote-buying in the 1994 county council council election, but only exhausted his court appeals in 2005 and was removed from office then. He was later sentenced to prison for accepting bribes in a case related to the construction of the Mailiao incinerator plant, and was in prison from July 2018 to May 2021. The Chang family has maintained considerable influence in Yunlin through local agricultural cooperative associations. 
• Chang Li-shan first entered electoral politics in 2004, when she won a seat in the LY as an independent. She served one term but didn't win a nomination to a single-member district in the new, smaller legislature in 2008. She was the KMT's candidate for Yunlin county executive in 2009, then suddenly pulled out that September, leaving the KMT scrambling to find an alternative. She eventually ran as the KMT nominee in the next cycle, losing to the DPP's Lee Chin-yung (李進勇), 57-43%. She tried again in 2018 and turned the tables on Lee, winning that race 54-42%.     
• Factional politics in Yunlin are complicated, and to add to the confusion, everyone seems to be named Chang (張). The Chang Jung-wei faction of which Chang Li-shan is a part has sometimes been allied with the KMT, and sometimes independent. Even members of Chang Jung-wei's family have sometimes fought against one another in elections here. 
• Yunlin is a largely rural agricultural county with no major cities and a long history of environmental activism. The Mailiao petrochemical plant complex on the coast has resulted in some serious environmental damage and fears of elevated cancer risks. Environmental issues are especially salient in the county. 
• Liu got his start on the Yunlin County Council, first winning a seat in 2002. He gained national attention in 2008 when he ran for the legislature in Yunlin 1, lost, then accused his opponent Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) of the KMT of vote-buying. Chang lost the case and was stripped of his seat in 2009, and Liu won the by-election to replace him. He's represented Yunlin 1 ever since. He's not named Chang so he's got that going for himself at least. 
• Update 9.2. Independent candidate Lin Chia-yu is a dentist who previously ran in 2018, winning 1.57% of the vote. 

Polls: 

• 2022.9.22-25: SET News with an in-house poll that finds Chang leading Liu 37-28%, with 38% undecided. The same poll also finds generic partisan support for DPP at 26%, KMT at 15%, TPP at 12%, and NPP at 5%. 

Rating: Leans KMT. Yunlin is in the Hoklo agricultural heartland of southern Taiwan and should be a deep green DPP stronghold, as it has been at the presidential level for 20 years. But as in most of rural Taiwan, factional politics complicates elections for the legislature and county-level positions here. Chang Li-shan enjoys the power of incumbency and decent approval ratings, in addition to her family background. My expectation is that she's likely to win re-election unless it's an especially bad year for the KMT nationally.   

Result: KMT hold. Chang wins, 56.6-41.6%

KMT: Nominated former legislator Su Ching-chuan (蘇清泉).
DPP: Nominated party-list legislator Chou Chun-mi (周春米) on April 27. 
Others: The NPP is running a candidate here, Chan Chih-chun (詹智鈞). No others.
T-PVI: G+6
​Notes: 

• Popular DPP incumbent Pan Men-an (潘孟安) is term-limited out and it's not clear what he'll do next; at one point he was even mentioned as a possibility for the party's nomination in New Taipei. 
• Unusually for this cycle, the DPP held a polling primary for Pingtung, which was contested by three DPP legislators: Chou, her fellow party list legislator Chiang Jui-hsiung (莊瑞雄), and Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) from Pingtung 1. All three were backed by different party heavyweights. Chou is part of the New Tide Faction in the DPP and was supported by incumbent Pan. Chung was backed by the previous Pingtung county executive, Tsao Chi-hung (曹啟鴻). And Chuang was supported by former LY speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全). 
• Chou is a former district court judge. She was elected on the DPP's party list to the LY in 2016 and 2020, but has never run for office in Pingtung before. She does, however, come from a political family in the county: her father, Chou Hui-huang (周輝煌), served as a KMT county councilor in the 1970s. One of the criticisms leveled against her in the primary was that she was too friendly with local KMT leaders.    
• The KMT's nominee Su Ching-chuan ran previously in 2008 for the legislature in Pingtung 3, losing 51-43% to Pan Men-an. He was added to the KMT's party list in 2012, serving one term as a legislator. He then ran in 2018 for the county executive, also losing that race to Pan, 56-43%, in a very pro-KMT year. Maybe without Pan on the ballot he's got a chance?   
• Chan is a neurologist at Pingtung Christian Hospital and the head of the NPP Pingtung chapter.
• Pingtung has been reliably green in recent years. It also lost an LY seat in the 2020 reapportionment, which eliminated the bluest, Pingtung City-based district that the KMT held from 2008-2016, so there's no incumbent legislator from the blue camp who could mount a challenge. But as in many of the more rural parts of Taiwan, the KMT retains a stronger presence in the townships and the county councils of Pingtung than its performance at higher levels would indicate.      

Polls: 

• 2022.9.27-10.1: RWNews online poll finds Chou ahead, but not by much: 37% to Su at 35%, with Chan at 4%. That's much closer than expected, and it suggests some lingering unhappiness in the green camp with the primary contest.

Rating: Likely DPP. For the DPP, the polling results helped resolve what could have been a prolonged schism in Pingtung. Chou should be the next Pingtung County executive unless something goes badly wrong with the party's post-primary reconciliation here. 

Result: DPP hold. Chou Chun-mi wins, 49.1-46.6%. 

KMT: Renominated incumbent magistrate Hsu Chen-wei (徐榛蔚). 
DPP: Nominated presidential spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka on July 5. 
Others: Perennial candidate Huang Shih-peng (黃師鵬). No others. 
T-PVI: B+20
​Notes: 

• Kolas's nomination instantly made Hualien a race to watch. As the spokeswoman for the Presidential Office and a close aide of Tsai Ing-wen, she is the most high-profile indigenous member of the DPP government. If she wins, Kolas would be to my knowledge only the second indigenous Taiwanese ever to serve as a county or city executive -- the first was Chen Chien-nian (陳建年), the father of current DPP legislator Chen Ying (陳瑩), who as a KMT member served two terms as magistrate of Taitung County from 1993-2001 and was then appointed to be head of the Council of Indigenous Peoples in the Chen Shui-bian administration. 
• Hsu is the ex-wife of the previous county executive Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁), who was convicted of insider trading and stock manipulation way back in 2005. Fu remained out on appeal and managed to win two elections for Hualien magistrate in the interim, in 2009 and 2014. He was finally removed from office in 2018, but then ran for and won the Hualien legislative seat in 2020, defeating current ambassador to the US Bi-khim Hsiao (蕭美琴) 46.0-40.5%. After exhausting his last appeal he went to prison in May 2020, and was released early on parole in May 2021. He's now rejoined the KMT and was elected to the party's Central Standing Committee in March 2022. Yikes. But hey--at least he's not a plagiarist?
• Fu and Hsu's divorce was a transparent attempt to circumvent Taiwan's "relatives clause" in the Public Officials Conflict of Interest Act (公職人員利益衝突迴避法) that prevents spouses and family members of officials from receiving appointments or contracts; just before he was removed from office, Fu appointed Hsu as his deputy in Hualien, and she subsequently has run the county government in his stead. If there's one race that would symbolize a victory against local corruption and black gold politics this round, Hualien county executive is it. 
• Despite all that, Hsu crushed her opponent in 2018, 71-25%, to win a full term as Hualien County executive, and her approval ratings have been near the top of all local executives for the last four years.
• Hualien is normally quite blue (B+20) at the presidential level, in part because of its large indigenous population -- now over a quarter of the Hualien electorate (27% in 2020). So one key variable is how much support Kolas might be able to draw from indigenous voters. Her background may not be as much of a help here as one might expect; there has long been a gulf between elite indigenous activists like Kolas and voters in indigenous villages.  
• Independent candidate Huang Shih-peng won only 2.6% of the vote in 2018, and 1.5% in 2014.   

Polls: 

• 2022.10.11-15: RWNews online poll shows Hsu leading Kolas 53-33%. Consistent with my expectations. 

Rating: likely KMT. Hsu enjoys an incumbency advantage and the support of her ex-husband's political networks, and Hualien is difficult political terrain for the DPP. 

Result: KMT hold. Hsu Chen-wei wins, 64.7-32.0%. 

KMT: Renominated incumbent magistrate Rao Ching-ling (also spelled Yao 饒慶鈴). 
DPP: Nominated legislator Liu Chao-hao (劉櫂豪) on July 5.
Others: One independent, Chen Chang-hung (陳長宏). 
T-PVI: B+18
Notes:

• Rao comes from a political family; her father Yao (Rao?) Eng-chi (饒穎奇) was a KMT legislator from Taitung from 1981-2005 and served as deputy LY speaker from 1999-2002. The younger Rao earned a PhD in political science from National Taiwan University in 2005, then went back to Taitung and won a county council seat. She quickly moved up there, becoming deputy council speaker in 2006, and speaker in 2009 -- the first woman to hold that position. In 2018 she beat KMT legislator and party caucus leader Sufin Siluko for the party's Taitung County executive nomination, and she then won the general election with 59% of the vote over Liu Chao-hao.  
• Liu also comes from a political family in Taitung, and he has been a consistent over-performer, winning the legislative seat here in 2012 in an upset, then winning comfortably in 2016 and 2020, in what has traditionally been one of the bluest counties in Taiwan. But running for county executive is a much harder challenge for a DPP candidate: as in Hualien, the county electorate includes indigenous voters, while the Taitung legislative district does not. About 35 percent of eligible voters in Taitung are indigenous -- the highest share of any jurisdiction in Taiwan.
• Indigenous voters overwhelmingly support the KMT, or at least pan-blue candidates. Why? The traditional explanation is a combination of KMT patronage networks, family ties (many retired mainland soldiers settled in rural areas and married indigenous women), and a general distrust of the DPP and its association with the Hoklo ethnic majority. For more see this great paper by Scott Simon. That pattern may be changing some: in the 2020 elections a DPP candidate, Saidai Tarovecahe (伍麗華) won a seat in the highlands indigenous constituency, while Chen Ying (陳瑩) won again in the lowlands constituency. 
• Liu has been a perennial candidate in the Taitung county executive election: this will be his sixth (!) attempt at the office. His closest run was in 2009, when he lost 53-47%. In the last race in 2018, he lost to Rao by about 20 points. It would take something truly unexpected to make this race competitive this time around. But Liu is still probably the strongest candidate the DPP could put forward here.

Polls: 

• 2022.10.11-15: RWNews online poll shows Rao leading Liu, 56-31%. In line with my priors. 

​Rating: likely KMT. Liu's ability to survive three election cycles as a DPP member representing a blue county is impressive. But to have a chance in the county executive race, he needs to make major inroads among the indigenous voters of Taitung as well. Otherwise, this is Rao's race to lose.  

​Result: KMT hold. Rao Ching-ling wins 61.2-36.7%. 

KMT: Renominated incumbent Lai Feng-wei (賴峰偉). 
DPP: Nominated former magistrate Chen Kuang-fu (陳光復) on August 10.
Others: Magong mayor Yeh Chu-lin (葉竹林) left the KMT in 2021. 
T-PVI: B+4
Notes: 

• The first of three offshore island counties, Penghu is the one whose party politics look most like mainland Taiwan. At the presidential level, Penghu County has tended to track closely the national trends: it went blue in 2008 and 2012, and green in 2016 and 2020. The Penghu legislative seat has been held since 2012 by a DPP member, Yang Yao (楊耀).
• For whatever reason the DPP has always struggled in the magistrate races here. In 2014, Chen Kuang-fu won, becoming only the 2nd DPP member ever to be county executive. But in 2018, he lost to the KMT's Lai Feng-wei 39-33% despite a pan-blue split. The party does not seem to have a deep bench here, and could not convince Yang Yao to run. Ultimately the DPP opted to send out Chen again for a rematch.
• Update 9.2. ​Yeh Chu-lin was a surprise late entrant to the race, registering on September 1. He is the two-term mayor of Magong, Penghu's only city.  

Rating: leans KMT. Lai's incumbency advantage and a neutral national political climate are probably enough to deliver him to another four-year term. But this could easily slip to the DPP if an independent emerges to pull votes away from Lai, or if there's a bad KMT environment at the national level.  
Update 9.23: toss-up. With Yeh Chu-lan's run, suddenly there is a pan-blue split here, too, and Penghu now looks like a true toss-up. Over half of Penghu voters live in Magong City, so Yeh starts out with a formidable base. The incumbent Lai only won 39% of the vote last time so both Yeh and Chen have a good shot here in a three-way race. 

​Result: DPP gain. Chen Kuang-fu wins 36.6-33.3-30.0%. 

KMT: Renominated incumbent magistrate Yang Cheng-wu (楊鎮浯) on April 20. 
DPP: Unless I've missed an announcement, the DPP still hasn't found anyone to run here this time around. 
Others: The previous magistrate Chen Fu-hai (陳福海) registered on the last day, along with a third candidate, KMT county councilor Lee Ying-wen (李應文). Three other independents.
T-PVI: B+37
Notes:

• Kinmen and Matsu are just off the coast of Fujian proper, and are the deepest of deep blue jurisdictions. Until the last decade, the DPP didn't even try to compete here. Its best showing ever was in the 2016 legislative election, when Chen Tsang-chiang (陳滄江) won 23.7% of the vote.  
• Yang won a close race in 2018, 47.5-46.2%, against the independent incumbent, Chen Fu-hai (陳福海). Yang was previously Kinmen's representative in the Legislative Yuan from 2016-18. 
• The current legislator from Kinmen, Chen Yu-chen (陳玉珍), considered challenging Yang this year, but the KMT central leadership apparently persuaded her to stay out of the race this cycle, and she endorsed Yang on April 20.
• The man Yang beat, Chen Fu-hai, has declared he won't attempt a rematch this time around.
• Update 9.2. And we have a race: both the previous magistrate Chen Fu-hai (陳福海) and a KMT county councilor, Lee Ying-wen (李應文), jumped in at the last moment. 

​Rating: Safe KMT.  In the end, Yang will probably draw an independent challenger or two, and maybe the DPP will eventually find a sacrificial lamb. But with Chen Yu-chen endorsing him, and Chen Fu-hai staying on the sidelines this time, Yang has an easy path to reelection. 
Update 9.23: toss up. With Chen Fu-hai changing his mind, this is now a 3-way race. All three candidates are nominally KMT members, although Yang is the official nominee and the party is likely to suspend Chen and Lee's membership. As the incumbent, Yang probably has the edge, but he suddenly has a tough race on his hands.

​Result: Independent (KMT renegade) gain.  Chen Fu-hai wins, 49.3-41.1%.

KMT: The party apparently hasn't endorsed a candidate, instead letting two party members duke it out in the general: deputy magistrate Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) and Tsao Er-yuan (曹爾元) are both running.  
DPP: Nominated party chapter head Lii Wen (李問) on August 10.  
Others: None.
T-PVI: B+38
Notes:

• KMT incumbent magistrate Liu Cheng-ying (劉增應) is term-limited out, meaning this will be an open-seat contest.  
• Lienchiang County is the formal name for Matsu Island and a few other nearby islets under ROC jurisdiction. It's the smallest constituency in Taiwan by population: the electorate in 2018 was only  10,713 voters.
• The unusual development here is Lii Wen's willingness to take the plunge and run in the deepest of deep-blue counties. This is a long-term party-building mission for Lii.  

Rating: Safe KMT. The only question is which KMT member will win.

Result: KMT hold. Wang Chung-min wins 51.0-42.1%.

Taiwan's local elections will be held this year on Saturday, November 26, the date set by the Central Election Commission. Altogether, nine different types of offices are up for election:

• (1) Mayors and (2) city councilors in centrally-administered municipalities (直轄市市長，市議員) for Taipei, Kaohsiung, New Taipei City, Taichung, Tainan, and Taoyuan);
• (3) Executives and (4) councilors in counties and county-level municipalities (縣／省轄市長，縣／市議員);
• (5) Township and town heads and (6) councilors (鄉／鎮長，鄉／鎮議員); 
• (7) Village and ward heads (村／里長).
• (8) Indigenous "self-governing" district heads and (9) representatives (自治區長，區代表). 

Since 2014, these elections have all been held concurrently on a four-year cycle. The local elections in 2022 are the only island-wide ones to be held between the 2020 and 2024 general elections for president and the legislature. That makes these something like midterm elections in the United States: in addition to deciding who governs across all of Taiwan's localities, they also are an important bellwether for trends in party politics. In 2014, the DPP flipped seven of the county and city executives, providing the first concrete indication that it could surpass the KMT and sweep to victory in 2016. In 2018, the KMT returned the favor, flipping nine local mayors including an astonishing upset victory by Han Kuo-yu in Kaohsiung; Han's victory set off a politically volatile period in Taiwan politics that concluded only with Tsai Ing-wen's equally astonishing comeback and emphatic reelection in January 2020. 

In an important shift, this time around both major parties have mostly done away with the party member votes and polling primaries that they had used over the past several election cycles to choose their nominees for city and county executives. Instead, the party chair --Tsai Ing-wen for the DPP, Eric Chu for the KMT -- is playing a decisive role in "negotiating" the nominees in each locality. (As this post from Nathan Batto details, both major parties have become more skeptical about the value of using polls to decide nominees after the 2020 election cycle.) The DPP has had considerable success using this method of negotiation in the past, but the KMT has typically struggled to work out side deals in the same way and suffered lots of intra-party splits as a result. A key concern for both, then, will be keeping disgruntled party members who were denied a nomination from running anyway as independents, or not campaigning to elect the party's official candidates. 

Now that the candidates for most of these races have been chosen, I am going to keep notes here on the nominees for each executive race, along with whatever other tidbits might be relevant, and try to give some context for what to expect. To keep this manageable, I've broken this discussion into three parts. Today's post has an overview of the highest-profile races in the six special municipalities (直轄市): Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung. Later I'll break down the county-level executive races in north and central Taiwan, and then follow with the south, east, and offshore islands.

Update 8.27. I've added in a rough estimate of the partisan leaning of each locality. Following the Partisan Voting Index (PVI) developed by the Cook Political Report for elections in the United States, I've called this the Taiwan Partisan Voting Index (T-PVI). To calculate T-PVI, I averaged the DPP presidential vote share in each jurisdiction over the last two presidential elections (in 2016 and 2020), then took the difference between the national and local vote share. B+1 means the city or county is one point bluer (i.e. less favorable to the DPP) than the national electorate. G+1 means it is one point greener (more favorable to the DPP.) By this measure, the "bluest" locality in Taiwan is Lienchiang County, at B+38, and the "greenest" is Tainan at G+11. Of Taiwan's 22 localities, 14 are bluer than average, 7 are greener, and one (Changhua County) is even. So, in a national political environment where the blue and green camps are running even, the blue side should be favored to win 14 localities to the green side's 7.

Update 9.20. The latest TFOP poll shows Tsai Ing-wen's approval rating dropping to 43.8% in September, the lowest monthly rating since June 2021, and near the lowest point of her second term. The national environment for the DPP doesn't look as favorable as it did two months ago.

Update 10.26. October TFOP poll is out and shows Tsai Ing-wen's approval rating bouncing back up to 51.2%, and generic identification with the DPP jumping up from 22.4% to 33.5%. That increase might (?) be related to the attention on the CCP 20th Party Congress, where Xi Jinping secured a third term as party secretary and stacked the Standing Committee of the Politburo with his own loyalists. Regardless, that's a big improvement for the DPP in the last month before the elections. 

KMT: Nominated Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) on May 25.
DPP: Nominated Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) on July 10.
Others: Deputy mayor Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) declared as an independent candidate on August 28. Former Tainan County magistrate Su Huan-chih (蘇煥) announced on July 29 he's running as an independent. 8 others also registered by the September 2 deadline. 
T-PVI: B+2
Notes:

• Chiang is a 2nd-term legislator representing Taipei 3, and the son of John Chang --> Chiang (章孝嚴 --> 蔣孝嚴), who has claimed to be an illegitimate child of Chiang Ching-kuo and in the 2000s changed the family name to make the claim explicit. Chiang Wan-an is 43 -- young by KMT standards -- and, given his father's long career in KMT politics and ostensible connection to CCK, is KMT royalty. His father held the same district from 2008-2012. 
• Chiang has twice won tough races for the legislature in Taipei 3, 47-38-12% in 2016, and 51-46% in 2020, while running well ahead of the KMT presidential ticket; Tsai Ing-wen carried the district with 52% of the vote in 2016, and 53.4% in 2020. 
• Chen headed the Ministry of Health and Welfare and also the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) during the pandemic. He became a household name through daily press conferences leading Taiwan's COVID response, but he has never before run for elected office.
• Incumbent Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) is term-limited out. Ko won this race in 2014 with the DPP's backing. In 2018, he barely won a three-way contest by less than 4000 votes when the DPP instead nominated its own candidate, Yao Wen-chih (姚文智).
• Ko appears to want his deputy mayor Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) to run as a candidate of the TPP. She has publicly expressed interest in running, although she hasn't joined the party (she's still a PFP member) and hasn't yet announced.
• Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智), who was the DPP magistrate of Tainan County from 2001-2010, has also registered to run. He ran for party chair in 2012, losing to Su Tseng-chang. Since then he's been marginalized within the party and has become a critic of Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP leadership. He left the party and ran for mayor in Tainan in 2018 as an independent, but won only 4.1% of the vote there. 
• Update 8.28: Huang Shan-shan has officially declared she's in the race. Taiwan media are now calling this a "tripod" (三腳督) election.  
• Update 9.15: Su Huan-chih complains that TV networks are focusing on only the top three candidates and ignoring his campaign. He says he will sue the National Communications Commission for not forcing news media to cover the candidates "fairly," citing Articles 49 and 104 of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act. The NCC (rightly in my view) responds by saying they're not going to dictate how networks should cover the campaigns. For background on the NCC, see here. For more on the regulation of elections in Taiwan, see this working paper.   

Polls:

• 2022.6.24: TVBS poll of Taipei mayor options. Data here show Huang Shan-shan pulling more support from the pan-green than pan-blue camp: only 62% of DPP partisans favor Chen Shih-chung and 22% favor Huang Shan-shan,  while 86% of KMT partisans favor Chiang Wan-an and only 9% favor Huang. For NPP partisans (only 3% of sample), 39% favor Huang,  28% favor Chen, and 27% favor Chiang. 
• 2022.8.22-26: TVBS poll taken just before Huang Shan-shan enters the race. Chiang Wan-an leads with 36%, Huang (!) is second with 26%, and Chen is third at 23%. The poll also finds ~50% of respondents have a favorable impression of Chiang and Huang, with Chen well back at only 29%, and 52% unfavorable. 
• 2022.8.31-9.3: Liberty Times poll taken just after Huang enters the race. Good illustration of "house effects" here: LTN is a green paper, and their poll shows Chen leading Chiang and Huang, 30-23-21%, in contrast to TVBS's much "bluer" results. Unfortunate that LTN, unlike TVBS, does not put up the full read-out of questions and methodology. I'll note the result here since it's a paper of record, but caveat emptor...
• 2022.9.13-17: RWNews online poll shows a virtual tie, with Chiang at 35.2%, Chen at 35.0%, and Huang at 24.8%.  
• 2022.9.29-30: TVBS poll finds Chiang still in lead: 40% to Chen's 22%, and Huang's 23%. Notable that Huang is not only viable but also potentially ahead of Chen. The partisan breakdown in this poll shows Huang still pulling about 20% of DPP and 42% of NPP, but only 7% of KMT partisans. Chiang appears to be keeping KMT voters firmly behind him.
• 2022.10.4-5: ETToday poll finds Chiang in lead, 40% to Chen's 27%, with Huang slightly back at 23%. Given polling margin of error, this is entirely consistent with the earlier TVBS polls of the race.
• 2022.10.5-6: My-Formosa poll finds Huang rising since the last time they polled this to overtake Chen, with Chiang still in the lead: 29.6%, to 28.1% for Huang, and 27.8% for Chen. Still a true three-cornered race. The results here are quite detailed and, as this writeup notes, show better favorability ratings for Huang and Chiang than Chen. 
• 2022.10.27-29: TVBS poll shows Chiang still leading at 37% to Chen's 27%, and Huang in the rear at 21%. Some clear divergence from other polls in the last month that show Huang moving up.
• 2022.11.1-5: Another poll shows Huang losing ground. RWNews online poll finds Chiang at 36%, Chen at 33%, and Huang at 28%. Some speculation in the accompanying article that partisans are drifting back to their respective blue and green camps, and swing voters are abandoning Huang to vote strategically for one of the other two.   

Rating: Leans KMT. Given his family background and relative youth, Chiang is the kind of candidate who can unite the party's fractious wings and appeal to the old guard of the KMT without alienating light blue and swing voters. Chen Shih-chung looked formidable as of a year ago but has seen his approval ratings decline as Taiwan has shifted away from a zero-COVID strategy. More relevant is that he's completely untested in electoral politics. A national poll from TPOF in July found more Taiwanese opposed (40.2%) than supported (37.6%) his decision to run for mayor.

It's hard to say what effect Huang would have on the race -- the TPP under Ko has moved toward the bluer end of the political spectrum, so my prior before seeing any polls was that her presence would hurt Chiang more. But Ko Wen-je also won two terms as mayor by appealing to young, green-leaning and independent voters; if Huang is able to draw support from these same blocs, as some polls are showing she might, perhaps it's Chen Shih-chung who is hurt more. At this point, with Huang not even formally in the race yet, my guess is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Result: KMT gain. Chiang Wan-an wins, 42.3-32.0-25.1%. CEC official results are here. 

KMT: Renominated incumbent mayor Hou You-yi (sometimes spelled Hou Yu-yih 侯友宜). 
DPP: Nominated Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) on July 10. 
Others: None.
T-PVI: B+2
Notes: 

• Hou has consistently polled among the most popular of Taiwan's local mayors over the past four years, and looks well-positioned to win re-election. He also looks like the strongest candidate the KMT could run in the 2024 presidential election; the outcome here could go a long way toward determining whether Hou actually declares for that race next year.
• Lin was mayor of Taichung for one term, then after being defeated for reelection in 2018 became the Minister of Transport and Communications in the Tsai administration. He resigned from that office in April 2021 after a Taroko Express train derailed in Hualien, killing 49 people.    
• The DPP took a long time to select a candidate here. Legislator Lo Chih-cheng announced on July 3 that he had been asked to run but was going to turn down the nomination because the party had delayed the announcement for too long. 
• ​New Taipei is the only special municipality the DPP has never won; the current premier Su Tseng-chang was the last member of the party to win an election here, way back in 2001 when it was still Taipei County. It is now Taiwan's most populous jurisdiction, with over four million people. 

Polls:

• 2022.9.13-17: RWNews online poll shows Hou leading Lin, 58-36%. 
• 2022.9.21-23: Liberty Times finds Hou leading Lin 52-22%. The usual complaints about lack of transparency in LTN's methodology apply here (e.g. how'd they weight their sample?); even so, coming from a polling outfit with a consistently green house effect, that's a huge lead for Hou.
• 2022.10.14-17:  ETToday poll shows Hou leading Lin 55-32%. Not a whole lot of movement in this one; partisans sticking with their camp's candidate, and Hou winning all the rest.  

Rating: Likely KMT. Hou is a popular incumbent running against a recycled DPP candidate with no previous base in the city. He should win comfortably. A defeat for Hou here would signal absolute disaster for the KMT's fortunes. Conversely, if Hou wins big here while KMT candidates falter everywhere else, it's going to be very hard for the KMT not to nominate him for president. To me the results in Xinbei, not Taipei, will hold the greatest national political implications. 

​Result: KMT hold. Hou You-yi wins 62.4-37.6%. 

KMT: Nominated Simon Chang (Chang San-cheng 張善政), the party's 2020 VP candidate and former premier for a brief period at the end of the Ma administration. 
DPP: Nominated Lin Chih-chien (林智堅), the incumbent mayor of Hsinchu City; Lin withdrew from the race on August 12, and the DPP announced legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) would run instead.  
Others: Lai Hsiang-ling (賴香伶), a TPP party-list legislator, is also running. Former DPP legislator Cheng Pao-ching (鄭寶清) declared on August 27. No others. 
T-PVI: B+4
Notes: 

• Popular incumbent Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) of the DPP is term-limited out. He's a potential candidate for president in 2024. 
• Both major parties nominated surprise candidates here, and both are now politically damaged. Chang was hand-picked by party chairman Eric Chu, apparently without consultation with local party power-brokers or legislators in the city who were blindsided by the decision. Chu also ignored strident appeals from Lo Chih-chiang, a former Ma administration spokesman and Taipei city councilor, who resigned his councilor seat and publicly declared he was running after Chu told him that he was not going to be nominated. 
• On the DPP side, the party dithered for a while before announcing that Lin, who is term-limited out in nearby Hsinchu City, would parachute in to run here. That seemed to be a safe (if uninspired) choice, and a way to help Lin (who is relatively young, at 47) keep his career in local politics going. But then some intrepid opponent researchers dug up credible evidence that Lin had plagiarized both of his master's theses, the first at Chung Hua University in 2008, and the second at National Taiwan University in 2017, submitted when he was already mayor of Hsinchu. 
• The pan-blue media has relentlessly hammered on these accusations, partly because the KMT's own candidate in the Kaohsiung by-election in 2020 to replace Han Kuo-yu, Li Mei-jhen (李眉蓁), was also accused of plagiarism and had to renounce her MA degree. It doesn't exactly help the DPP that Lin's thesis advisor was Chen Ming-tong, now the director-general of the National Security Bureau in the Tsai administration. 
• A twist here is that none of the three candidates has much previous connection to Taoyuan (all three have had to relocate their household registration to the city after entering the race). That may not matter much since many voters are also new to Taoyuan -- the city has grown more than any other municipality over the last decade and is now more populous than Taipei.  
• Update 8.12: Lin Chih-chien withdrew from the race on 8.12; the DPP immediately announced legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) would replace him. Cheng is the DPP's party caucus secretary in the Legislative Yuan and represents Taoyuan 1. He's won twice in a competitive district: 47-44% in 2016, and 46-43% in 2020. 
• Update 8.27: Another bad development here for the DPP: the former DPP legislator Cheng Pao-ching (鄭寶清) has announced he'll run as an independent for Taoyuan mayor. Part of his justification is that Cheng Yun-peng showed bad judgement by staunchly defending Lin in the thesis scandal. Cheng Pao-ching represented Taoyuan 4 from 2016-20 (a seat he won by only 160 votes), then narrowly lost reelection to current KMT legislator Wan Mei-ling (萬美玲) in 2020.
• Update 9.2: Now Simon Chang is facing his own plagiarism charges, although the context is quite different. Chang worked at the computer manufacturer Acer from 2007-09, and he led a research team that got a large grant (~US$1.9 million) from the Council of Agriculture (awarded toward the end of the Chen Shui-bian administration -- so this was not a political handout from the KMT government that followed, although it's sometimes being characterized that way) to write a series of reports on enhancing e-commerce for Taiwan's agricultural sector. The published collection contains many passages that were copied without proper citation. 

Polls: 

• 2022.8.15-16: TVBS poll finds Chang leading Cheng Yun-peng and Lai Hsiang-ling, 39-28-8%, with 25% undecided. 
• 2022.8.23-25: ETToday poll shows Chang leading Cheng Yun-peng, 39-26%, with Lai at 11%. 
• 2022.9.1-9.8: TVBS poll shows Chang leading the pack again with 36%, despite the COA report news breaking at the beginning of this survey period; Cheng Yun-peng has 27%, Cheng Pao-ching 8%, and Lai at only 5%. The Cheng-on-Cheng intra-DPP split looks bad for the party's chances here. The TPP's Lai apparently hasn't gotten any traction so far despite the face-plants by both major parties.
• 2022.9.14-16: Liberty Times poll (again, methodology caveats aside) finds Cheng Yun-peng in the lead, barely, over Chang: 29-25%, with 7% for Cheng Pao-ching, and 5% for Lai. 35% of those polled were undecided. Take the blue and green pollster results together and they suggest a two-man race but with a lot of voters up for grabs. 
• 2022.10.16-20: TVBS polls Taoyuan again, finds the race almost unchanged. Chang is holding his lead, 38-27% over Cheng Yun-peng, with Cheng Pao-ching at 6%, and Lai at 5%. 24% undecided.
• 2022.10.25-29: RWNews online poll shows Simon Chang in the lead over Cheng Yun-peng 46-41%. Compared to their previous polls, voters seem to be abandoning both Cheng Pao-ching and Lai Hsiang-ling and shifting toward one of the top two. A straight-up green-vs-blue race is better for the DPP, since they've got a very popular incumbent mayor and Taoyuan has trended green in recent years. But Cheng Yun-peng still appears to be behind.  

Rating: Toss-up. The KMT's nomination process here was Not Great; they passed over two Taoyuan legislators to nominate Chang, and it's going to be a struggle for the party to get all the local KMT politicos to line up behind him. But the DPP's decision to nominate Lin is also not looking so hot now, either. Lin is a newcomer to Taoyuan, too, and the plagiarism accusations may also be taking a toll on his appeal -- the most recent news is that an NTU committee found the accusations credible and has recommended his degree be rescinded. Given the stumbles in both blue and green camps, Lai Hsiang-ling of the centrist TPP could actually have a shot here, or at least a chance to play spoiler. 
Update 8.12: At this point, replacing Lin with Cheng probably helps the DPP. At the least, Cheng is from Taoyuan, and the switch happened early enough that he should be able to run a competitive campaign. The controversy over Lin's plagiarism cases was becoming a huge distraction for the party.  
​Update 8.27: Cheng Pao-ching's entry into the race complicates what has already become a difficult election for the DPP here. With the TPP's Lai not getting much traction in polls, Chang San-cheng now appears to have the edge.  
Update 10.26: Leans KMT. A month out from the election, and Simon Chang keeps holding on to a significant lead in polls, although well short of 50%. The TPP's Lai hasn't made any headway, so this is trending in the opposite direction from Hsinchu City with the KMT the likely beneficiary of strategic voting, while Cheng Pao-ching appears to be pulling enough of the vote to doom Cheng Yun-peng. Rating change to Leans KMT.   

Result: KMT gain. Simon Chang wins 52.0-40.0%. 

KMT: Renominated incumbent mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕).
DPP: Nominated legislator and deputy LY speaker Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) on April 27.
Others: A third candidate, Chen Mei-fei (陳美妃) registered on the last day to run as an independent.
T-PVI: B+1
Notes:

• Lu was previously a legislator (and a rival of former KMT chair and Taichung legislator Johnny Chiang 江啟臣), who barely edged out Chiang for the party's nomination here in 2018, then won a surprisingly large victory over Lin Chia-lung in the 2018 general election. Her approval ratings have lagged toward the bottom of all mayors around Taiwan, but she remains a formidable candidate--this TVBS poll (admittedly a blue news outlet with a consistently strong house effect in its polls) shows her with a 55-22% lead over Tsai at the end of June.
• Tsai has represented Taichung's 1st district since 2012, and became deputy speaker in 2016. He is close to a generic replacement-level DPP candidate but could probably win if it's a strong DPP year.
• Taichung has been a microcosm of national vote patterns over the last several election cycles. Lin Chia-lung won here in 2014 57-43%, and then Lu won it back for the KMT in 2018, also 57-43%. In between, Tsai Ing-wen won 45% of the vote in Taichung in 2012, 55% of the vote in 2016, and 57% in 2020: very close to her overall performance in each of those elections.
• Update 9.2. The independent candidate here, Chen Mei-fei, is unusual: she is a political novice (政治素人) not backed by any political group, and she apparently used her own personal savings to pay the NT$1.5 million deposit (about US$48,000 at current exchange rates). The Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (Article 32) requires that candidates must obtain ≥ 10% of the winning vote share in order to have their deposits refunded after the election. So, Chen risks forfeiting this registration deposit unless she wins ≥5% of the vote.  

Polls: 

• 2022.9.8-14: ETToday poll shows Lu leading Tsai 54-33%. 
• 2022.9.13-15: Formosa News with a detailed poll on the Taichung race. Among many findings here, Lu leads Tsai 59-20%. Also asks a more generic question about whether to switch parties or stick with KMT leader: that is in KMT's favor by a smaller margin, 54-25%. 
• 2022.9.22-26: TISR (thrilled to see them back in the polling business) has a new high-quality poll out on Taichung. It shows Lu leading Tsai 50-20% (!). Yikes. Lu's trust and approval ratings are over 70% in this poll. If that's close to accurate, she's going to be hard to beat. 

Rating: Leans KMT. This is another race to watch as a bellwether for national trends. As the incumbent, Lu starts out with some advantages, but she's not Hou: her personal appeal and networks aren't going to carry her to victory in a down year. My prior here is that the result will be driven by national trends rather than local issues and candidate quality. If it's a pro-DPP election nationally, Lu is in trouble. If it's not, she probably wins.
Update 10.26: Likely KMT. A month out from Election Day and this race hasn't moved much. Lu is looking much more popular, and Tsai worse, than I expected in August. Polls keep showing this race to be more like the KMT's version of Tainan or Kaohsiung than a swing city. Rating change to Likely KMT. 

Result: KMT hold. Lu Shiow-yen wins 59.3-38.9%. 

KMT: Nominated city councilor Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) on March 23. 
DPP: Renominated incumbent Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) (sometimes spelled Huang Wei-cher). 
Others: Hsu Chung-hsin (許忠信), a former TSU legislator, has entered the race as an independent. Three others, including 2018 candidate Lin Yi-feng (林義豐).
​T-PVI: G+11
Notes: 

• The KMT has never won here since Tainan City and County were merged into a special municipality in 2010. Ma Ying-jeou actually carried Tainan City in 2008 (isn't that amazing?), but since the merger with deep green Tainan County, KMT candidates face a near-hopeless task trying to compete here. 
• Even so, Huang Wei-che had an unexpectedly close race on his hands in 2018. Although he was the DPP's official nominee in a deep green city, four independent candidates pulled almost 30 percent of the vote, and he won with only 38% support. Huang appears to have been caught up in pan-green infighting in Tainan, which has been unusually public and acrimonious for several years now.  
• The 32.4% the previous KMT candidate got here in 2018 in a strongly anti-DPP year is probably an absolute ceiling for the party. For the KMT to win in Tainan now looks like it would require a perfect split of the vote among green candidates, or supporting a DPP factional leader as their nominee. If there's one place where it makes sense for the KMT to forego nominating anyone at all and trying instead to back an anti-DPP independent, Tainan is it.

Polls: 

• 2022.9.23-29: ETToday poll shows Huang leading Hsieh, 50-29%. Everyone else is under 5%. 
• 2022.10.18-22: RWNews online poll (see Chiayi City poll section for more details) has Huang ahead but not by a lot: 44% to Hsieh's 36%. Nobody else is polling more than 5%. For an incumbent mayor in a deep green city, Huang is coming in well below expectations in this poll. 

Rating: Safe DPP. Huang's renomination by the DPP should ensure his election even if his Tainan rivals remain disgruntled and independents pull some of the pan-green vote away from him. 

​Result: DPP hold. Huang wins 48.8-43.6%. 

KMT: ​Nominated former legislator Ko Chih-en (柯志恩) on June 29.  
DPP: Renominated incumbent mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁). 
Others: Two independent candidates.
T-PVI: G+6
Notes:   

• Ko is a faculty member at Tamkang University in Tamsui, New Taipei. Her father Ko Wen-fu (柯文福) was magistrate of Pingtung County from 1973-1981, so she comes from a political family. In 2016, she was ranked second on the KMT's party list, ensuring her a seat for the 2016-2020 term. [correction 9.23]: In 2020 she ran for the LY in New Taipei 7, losing 46-40% to Lo Chih-cheng, then returned to teaching. She has also headed the KMT's National Policy Foundation. She moved her household registration from New Taipei to Kaohsiung for this election. 
• Chen Chi-mai has already had a long career in the DPP, serving as a legislator, acting mayor of Kaohsiung, EY spokesman, and deputy secretary-general of the presidential office. His shocking loss to Han Kuo-yu in 2018 did not ultimately set back his political ambitions much; he was instead elevated to the central government where he served as vice premier before returning to contest the by-election after Han's recall in June 2020. 
• Chen is the son of Chen Che-nan (陳哲男), a KMT-turned-DPP legislator in the 1990s who later served as a close aide to Chen Shui-bian in the Presidential Office. After Chen Shui-bian left office, Chen Che-nan was convicted and served three years in prison on bribery charges.     

Polls: 

• 2022.9.28-30:  ETToday poll shows Chen leading Ko 54-31%. Within the range of expectations but I'm a bit surprised Ko is polling that well. Perhaps she's more appealing to pan-blue voters than I thought. 

Rating: Safe DPP. Han Kuo-yu pulled off a miracle by winning in Kaohsiung in 2018--a feat that nobody thought was possible in a city that's been a DPP bastion for more than two decades. But the "Han craze" is much diminished now, since he lost the 2020 presidential election and was then recalled by Kaohsiung voters in June 2020. Chen Chi-mai easily won the subsequent by-election and is well-placed for reelection. 

​Result: DPP hold. Chen Chi-mai wins 58.1-40.2% 

 I recently had the privilege of reading and reviewing for China Quarterly a massive new volume on the role of international human rights conventions and their importance for Taiwan.

The editors are all major figures in their own right. Jerome Cohen is legendary for taking up the study of Chinese legal systems during the 1950s and 60s, when nobody else thought there was much point to it, and he was a professor to both Annette Lu and Ma Ying-jeou at Harvard in the 1970s. His opening chapter recounts some of his personal history pushing back against Taiwan's martial-law-era criminal justice system, and there are some eye-opening anecdotes in there. I did not know, for instance, that Cohen was instrumental in bringing a civil lawsuit in a Taiwanese court against the the killers of Henry Liu, and that he worked with future Kaohsiung mayor and DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh 謝長廷 to bring pressure on the KMT regime through its own court system.

William Alford and Chang-fa Lo are no slouches, either; Alford is a vice dean and director of East Asian Legal Studies at Harvard. Chang-fa Lo 羅昌發 was Dean of National Taiwan University Law School and served as a justice of the ROC Council of Grand Justices, Taiwan's constitutional court, from 2011-2019 (as a Ma Ying-jeou appointee). In 2020 he was appointed Taiwan's representative to the World Trade Organization by Tsai Ing-wen. So during his years of public service he has managed to receive support from both the blue and green camps.

Between them, they have assembled an extremely impressive group of legal scholars and practitioners to contribute 37 chapters on many aspects of human rights law in Taiwan. The authors are also a welcome mix of Taiwan- and overseas-based experts. This kind of international, English-language collaboration is hard to pull off, but the payoff comes from having Taiwanese voices featured prominently throughout the volume and a truly original set of sources and scholarship on this topic.  

***

I note in my review several things that make Taiwan's human rights regime unusual.

First, because of its diplomatic isolation, Taiwan isn't party to the key UN human rights conventions and treaties, but despite (because?) of that isolation, international law has been especially influential in the transformation of the human rights regime. For instance, in 2009 (when the KMT was the ruling party), the Legislative Yuan adopted into domestic law the two major human rights covenants, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and empowered Taiwan's courts to nullify other legal statutes inconsistent with provisions in the two treaties. Several chapters also focus on the efforts to turn the Control Yuan into a human rights commission or ombudsman that would give it a role more in line with international practices in other liberal democracies.

Second, Taiwan's legal system still rests on the foundations of the 1947 Republic of China constitution. In a rather odd twist, the protections for human rights enshrined there were actually quite advanced for its time, and that has helped to strengthen civil liberties in the democratic era. In particular, the survival of the ROC constitutional framework gave the constitutional court an outsized role in shaping the pace and direction of human rights reforms: in the 1990s, the court began to breathe life into constitutional aspirations that went mostly unfulfilled during the pre-democratic era and set legal practices and protections on a more liberal trajectory.

Third, Taiwan's current legal system is a remarkable mix of at least three very different traditions:  Chinese Confucianism; European continental law (much of that itself first refracted through Japanese practice before coming to the ROC, or directly to Taiwan during colonial rule); and Anglo-American practices, most notably in the applications of US First Amendment jurisprudence to libel and free-speech cases. It is a truly unique concoction of influences, and as a result it is fascinating to watch debates over legal reforms play out there now.  

I came away from this book convinced that in addition to the economic and political "miracles" that get most of the attention in scholarship on Taiwan's ROC-era transformation, there is also a human rights miracle that deserves separate consideration. Taiwan and Human Rights will be an important reference for anyone interested in Taiwan's evolution from a serial violator of human rights to one of its most enthusiastic proponents. ​

The Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region will host a virtual event tomorrow (register at the link), Tuesday, December 8 at 4pm, the Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Era.This event will cover some of the findings from a recent new book that I have co-edited with Yun-han Chu and Larry Diamond. We're fortunate to have three of the contributors to the book able to join us for the discussion. They are: 

Szu-yin Ho, Professor of Strategic and International Affairs at Tamkang University, Danshui, Taiwan, and the former  deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council during the Ma Ying-jeou presidency. He'll be speaking about the legacies of President Ma's cross-Strait policies. 

Austin Horng-en Wang, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UNLV. He'll provide some remarks about the emergence of Tsai Ing-wen as the unquestioned leader of the DPP during the Ma era. 

Shih-hao Huang, Post-Doctoral Fellow in political science at National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan. He'll present data that show the challenges the Ma administration had getting priority legislation approved by the Taiwan's Legislative Yuan, despite enjoying a large KMT majority there for both his terms. He will also compare legislative success rates under Ma to the Tsai Ing-wen era, and reflect a bit on what the differences can tell us about executive-legislative relations in Taiwan. 

For more on the book, and a link to the first chapter, see this previous blog post. 

This will be the last event of the calendar year for PTIP. Keep an eye out for announcements about our 2021 activities, coming soon. 

Finally, on a personal note, this event is my first as the Program Manger of the Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific. After being out of that role for over a year, as of November 1 I've stepped back in to take over the day-to-day management of the current incarnation of the Taiwan program at its new home at the Hoover Institution. Many thanks to Glenn Tiffert for his great stewardship of PTIP over the past year while juggling many other responsibilities--including, not coincidentally, the China Global Sharp Power project.    

China's recent military bravado in the Taiwan Strait represents the end state of a failed strategy

The drums of war are growing louder in the Taiwan Strait. In the last month, at least 50 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft have entered Taiwan’s airspace. The volume of threatening language directed at Taiwan from sources in China, both official and unofficial, has reached a crescendo, and the headlines in the news grow more alarmingeach month. In the United States, mainstream foreign policy voices are now openly debating whether the U.S. should abandon strategic ambiguity and openly commit to defend Taiwan in the case of an attack — an idea advocated not so long ago by only a radical fringe.

​But these dire headlines are misleading: Beijing is not gearing up for an attack on Taiwan. It still has neither the capacity to launch a successful full-scale invasion, nor the motive to risk a conflict with the United States. In reality, the increasingly bellicose language coming from China is a sign of weakness, not strength, and a cover for the failure of its own Taiwan policy. Having thrown away most of its non-military leverage in a fruitless effort to compel Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to endorse its one China principle, Beijing has now been reduced to counter-productive saber-rattling to express its discontent at U.S. arms sales and high-level diplomatic visits, while Taiwan races to strengthen its own defenses and reorient its economy away from overdependence on mainland China. In short, Xi Jinping’s approach to the “Taiwan issue” has turned into a strategic fiasco — one that may take years for Beijing to recover from...

It's alive! This book volume on Taiwan politics during the Ma Ying-jeou years (2008-2016), which I've edited with Chu Yun-han and Larry Diamond, just arrived in the mail from Lynne Rienner Publishers this weekend.

This is our attempt at a deep dive into various aspects of Ma-era politics, including party politics and elections, political institutions and governance challenges, trends in public opinion and democratic values, civil society and social movements, and cross-Strait and US-Taiwan-PRC relations. This look at the Ma years parallels somewhat our earlier book on the Chen Shui-bian era.

We were fortunate to be able to assemble a great group of contributors for this book--about half based in Taiwan and half abroad--who offer a variety of perspectives on the politics of the Ma years. The scholarship here draws on years of conferences, papers, and conversations that started even before President Ma left office, including with some of the key participants in and outside of the Ma administration. (Chapter 15, for instance, is by Szu-yin Ho, who served for two years as deputy Secretary-General of Ma's National Security Council.) This sort of cross-national collaboration is less common than it should be (in part because it's logistically hard to pull off!), but I am convinced the final product is much stronger for it.  

Among the many great contributions here, let me especially highlight three that provide original, provocative answers to important questions about the Ma era:

• In Chapter 3, Austin Wang explains how Tsai Ing-wen emerged from obscurity as unrivaled leader of the DPP during its years in opposition, despite having never previously held elected office;
• In Chapter 4, Nathan Batto shows how President Ma's recurrent troubles with the legislature had more to do with deep divides within the ruling KMT than they did with the obstructionist tactics of the opposition DPP and with Ma's party rival, Speaker Wang Jin-pyng;
• In Chapter 7, Isaac Shih-hao Huang and Shing-yuan Sheng demonstrate that having a majority in the Legislative Yuan does not mean a party has complete control over the Legislative Yuan, and that the legislature's decentralized law-making process makes it challenging for the executive branch to get high-priority legislation approved, whether or not the president's party holds a majority. 

For more thoughts on those issues and a broader overview of the book, check out the introductory chapter, which is available ungated from the publisher's website. 

If Tsai Ing-wen is superstitious, she should be worried: second term presidents in Taiwan appear to be cursed. Much like President Tsai, her predecessor Ma Ying-jeou started his second term on a confident and triumphant note. But over the next four years, he faced a relentless series of political crises, including an intraparty power struggle with Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jin-pyng, massive protests against the death of a military conscript and construction of a nuclear power plant, and of course the Sunflower Movement occupation of the legislature, which effectively halted cross-Strait rapprochement with Beijing. President Ma’s approval ratings bottomed out at record lows, and he stepped down in 2016 on the heels of a sweeping electoral defeat of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), ultimately having accomplished little in his last years in office.

Somehow, Chen Shui-bian’s second term was even worse. The controversy around his re-election victory in 2004 robbed him of whatever political momentum he might have enjoyed, and he spent most of his remaining tenure fending off vicious partisan attacks, anti-corruption accusations in the press, massive street rallies by his opponents, and impeachment attempts in the legislature. In his attempt to keep core pro-independence supporters on his side, President Chen pursued a brash symbolic agenda that deliberately provoked the pan-Blue opposition, infuriated Beijing, alienated even potential allies in Washington, and left him politically isolated. In the 2008 elections, his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) paid a steep electoral price, and after his term was finally over, Chen ended up in handcuffs: the corruption accusations turned out to be true, and he was sentenced to a long prison term.

The rest of this piece continues at Taiwan Insight.

​Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP are headed for a historic victory in Saturday’s elections, and the battle has already begun to define the narrative about what that means. One fairly common refrain is that this likely outcome will presage a fundamental realignment of the party system around issues beyond the blue-green divide over cross-Strait relations.
 
I’m skeptical that we are about to see this kind of realigning election, despite the attention given to the campaigns of the so-called “Third Force” parties. I’m also skeptical that this result will be the death knell for the KMT as a political party capable of winning elections. The KMT's coming defeat clearly reflects deep unhappiness with Ma Ying-jeou and the KMT’s rule over the last eight years, intensified by a spectacularly ill-timed economic downturn over the last few months (at least if you are a KMT member!) But an unpopular leader, toxic party brand, and disillusioned supporters are not fatal to major party survival, as the DPP showed after its 2008 electoral thrashing. So while a KMT recovery is not assured, and will at a minimum require some major leadership shakeups, we shouldn't expect the party simply to fade away, and for all those pan-blue supporters (still at least 30 percent of the electorate) to suddenly become fans of the DPP or one of the new parties.

Of course, I could be totally wrong--I'm just some guy on the internet, after all. But either way, we'll know a lot more soon: elections have a nice way of splashing everybody with a cold dose of reality. The results of the election this Saturday will give us the most concrete evidence we'll have to evaluate these competing narratives. So, in the interest of intellectual honesty, let me lay out my own expectations about what will happen, and what it means. Beyond who wins and loses, here's what I'll be watching most closely to see where Taiwanese politics is headed.

One of the major advantages the DPP has had over the KMT in this election cycle is its cooperative relationship with the smaller upstart parties on its flanks: the Taiwan Solidarity Union (台聯), the Social Democratic Party-Green Party (社會民主黨 － 台灣綠黨) alliance, and above all the New Power Party (時代力量).

The TSU is the DPP's traditional ally, and the two worked fairly closely together in 2012 to coordinate nominations: the TSU avoided running candidates against DPP nominees in the districts, and the DPP encouraged deep green voters to consider casting a party list vote for the TSU. That strategy paid off for the pan-green camp when the TSU won 8.96% of the party list vote, which returned it to the LY after a four-year absence. And in the districts, the DPP candidates won all but four constituencies that Tsai Ing-wen carried (and six that she didn't.)

Unfortunately for the TSU, it isn't looking so hot in the polls right now and probably won't win the five percent of the party list vote it needs to retain seats in the legislature. It's likely to be replaced by the NPP, which was founded only about a year ago and is running several high-profile candidates in district races. This could have been a major problem for the DPP: a new pan-green party with a strong pro-independence slant and brash leadership, targeting the same youth vote that the DPP is counting on to help it win a majority in the LY, and without a past history of coordination in elections.   

Instead, the DPP leadership recognized this threat early on and worked out a cooperation agreement: the party would yield several districts to the NPP (only three, as it turned out), and the NPP would only campaign in those districts to avoid splitting the pan-green vote elsewhere. The arrangement has worked well enough that Tsai Ing-wen is even showing up to appear with some of the NPP candidates.

The DPP has pursued a similar approach to cooperation with candidates from other groupings, yielding several other seats to small parties. Via Solidarity.tw, here's the list of small-party candidates the DPP has endorsed:  

• Taipei 3: Billy Pan (潘建志), Independent
• Taipei 4: Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊), People First Party
• Taipei 5: Freddy Lim (林昶佐), New Power Party
• Taipei 6: Fan Yun (范雲), SDP-Green alliance
• Taipei 7: Yang Shih-chiu (楊實秋), Independent
• ​Taipei 8: Lee Ching-yuan (李慶元), Independent
• New Taipei 9: Lee Hsing-chang (李幸長), Independent
• New Taipei 12: Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), New Power Party
• Taoyuan 6: Chao Cheng-yu (趙正宇), Independent
• Taichung 3: Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸), New Power Party
• Taichung 5: Liu Kuo-lung (劉國隆), TSU

11 seats seems like a lot to yield, right? Isn't this a costly signal that the DPP is willing to weaken its shot at a majority in order to defeat the KMT and forge a broad coalition in the LY? Well, let's step back and see just how crucial these seats are to a DPP majority. Here's the list of district seats ranked by how large Tsai Ing-wen's lead or deficit was in 2012, with the yielded districts marked in yellow (all of them are currently held by the KMT): 

Remember that the DPP needs about 41 district seats to win a single-party majority in the LY. Notice where almost all the yielded seats lie? Below #41. Waaaaay below, in fact. If some of these seats go to third-party candidates, the DPP is already going to have a majority all by itself.

I noted this in a previous post, but it's worth reiterating here: this is smart politics by the DPP. They're ceding races that are not very competitive to third parties and independents in exchange for non-compete agreements in the critical races in the 25-45 range. (In fact, this ranking probably understates just how difficult some of these seats are: Taipei is more reliably blue than the rest of the island, so the swing toward Tsai there is likely to be lower than elsewhere.)

How Much is One District Worth?
One "yellow" district is high up the list, though, and it's a very interesting one: Taichung 3 is ranked #30. What's going on there? The NPP has nominated Hung Tzu-yung, and the DPP is not running a candidate. Like the NPP candidates elsewhere, Hung is already a well-known figure in Taiwan: she is the sister of Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘), a military conscript who died in July 2013 as the result of harsh punishment by his superiors. (The incident triggered large protests, the resignation of the Minister of National Defense, and the rapid passage of a far-reaching reform of the military justice system.)

​By generic partisan lean, Taichung 3 is by far the most competitive district of any the DPP has yielded; a swing of just 2.33% toward Tsai would turn it green. If Hung can run anywhere close to Tsai's 2016 total in this district, she should win it easily. So, of the NPP candidates running for district seats, it's Hung, not Huang Kuo-chang (in New Taipei 12) or Freddy Lim (in Taipei 5), who is best positioned to win in 2016.

It's likely that the threat of NPP candidacies in critical races elsewhere gave them the bargaining power to get the DPP to yield Taichung 3, and as a result they're well-positioned to win at least one district seat, in addition to whatever they get from the party list. From the DPP's perspective, this is a good trade as well: they cede one competitive district for a full non-compete agreement everywhere else. And with one prominent exception, the deal has held. ​

The Curious Case of Hsinchu City
​That exception is Hsinchu City, where the DPP Legislative Yuan party caucus leader Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) is running against both the KMT nominee Cheng Cheng-chien (鄭正鈐), a city council member, and the NPP's Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智). Ker is widely disliked by the NPP's core supporters, and Chiu has refused to withdraw from the race, creating the possibility of a serious pan-green split in the vote. With a big enough swing (11-12%) toward Tsai, this seat could be competitive, but it's likely to be close even then, so Chiu's candidacy could well be fatal to Ker's chances.

What's especially intriguing about this race is the possibility of an ulterior motive for the NPP, and possibly some elements of the DPP, too. As party caucus leader, Ker is in line to be the next speaker of the LY if he wins re-election, and he's likely to try to block any meaningful reforms of the cross-party negotiation mechanism (政黨協商) that has given the current speaker, Wang Jin-pyng, tremendous influence over the legislative process. That in turn could prevent Tsai Ing-wen from getting much of her policy agenda through the LY. I have no idea if Chiu's campaign is a deliberate strategy to take out Ker, but from the NPP's point of view, preventing Ker from winning re-election might just be worth splitting the pan-green vote and throwing the seat to the KMT. Some of that animosity clearly comes from Ker's long history of deal-making in the LY and his role as the key DPP member in closed-door cross-party negotiations. For instance, it's easy to forget that he was actually at the center of the special influence case that caused the open rift between Wang Jin-pyng and Ma Ying-jeou--it was a case against Ker that Wang leaned on prosecutors not to appeal.

By the way, isn't it curious that Ker is fighting for re-election in such a tough place for the DPP? (Tsai lost here in 2012 by 21 points.) How did this happen to the party caucus chair?! Ker was previously a party-list legislator for two terms, so by DPP party rules he has to run in a district now. Unlike the KMT, which flagrantly violated its own rules to allow Wang Jin-pyng to run for a third time as a list legislator, the DPP didn't yield on this point. But why Hsinchu? Well, that's where Ker is originally from; he won several consecutive races there under the old SNTV system. Now that the electoral system has changed to single-member plurality, though, he's got a much tougher challenge.

I'm a bit surprised that Ker didn't manage to parachute into an easier district somewhere else. The fact that he's not only running in Hsinchu but also facing a challenge from the NPP suggests some significant opposition to him from elsewhere within his own party. But if he overcomes the odds and wins his race, he is going to owe Tsai Ing-wen very little, and he may have a political axe to grind with her or some other elements of the DPP for putting him in such a tough position. If he ends up as LY speaker, he could quite plausibly be a DPP version of Wang Jin-pyng during the Ma era: a powerful and independent-minded leader whose first priority is protecting his own interests, not those of the president or his party. Given how badly that turned out for Ma Ying-jeou and the KMT, this race could have an outsized impact on relations between Tsai and the DPP caucus in the LY after the election. It's worth watching closely. 

UPDATE 2015.12.30: Shortly after I wrote this, allegations of vote-buying were levied against the local KMT branch and its candidate, Cheng Cheng-chien, for holding a free public banquet in a local night market for KMT members and local residents. Pretty brazen, and stupid.