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From 2022: DPP legislator Tsai Shih-ying ultimately lost the Keelung mayor's race, despite the cute dog.
Summing Up the Races
Going into this election cycle, the KMT holds 16 of 22 localities, the DPP holds 5 (Tainan, Kaohsiung, Chiayi County, Pingtung, and Penghu), and there is one independent (Kao Hung-an in Hsinchu City). As of late August, here are my ratings for the 22 executive races:
Safe KMT (3): Nantou, Kinmen, Lienchiang
Likely KMT (3): Taipei, Taoyuan, Miaoli,
Leans KMT (5): Taichung, Keelung, Hsinchu County, Yunlin, Hualien, Taitung,
Toss-up (2): New Taipei, Penghu
Leans DPP (4): Yilan, Changhua, Chiayi City, Pingtung,
Likely DPP (3): Tainan, Kaohsiung, Chiayi County
Safe DPP (0): none
Leans IND (1): Hsinchu City
If we assign all the leaners and likely races into their respective camps, the DPP would have a net gain, and the KMT a net loss, of two, for a breakdown of 12-7, with one independent (Hsinchu City) and New Taipei and Penghu to be determined by coin flips. So the DPP is well-positioned to improve a little on 2022. Some more general observations follow.
(1) This is a sneaky hard election cycle for the KMT. Ever since Taiwan's local elections were consolidated into a single four-year cycle, the conventional wisdom has been that on aggregate they will turn out a lot like midterm elections in the United States: the party of the president loses seats. That was my starting assumption as well, and the implication was that the DPP would struggle this cycle since President Lai is not all that popular.
But there are several structural factors working against the KMT right now. First, they already control almost every winnable locality, including in places that are reliably green at the national level like Yilan, Yunlin, and Chiayi City. This time around they're playing defense.
Second, the KMT doesn't have many incumbents running. Incumbency helps a lot at the local level, and the KMT won several of these races in 2022 because they had popular mayors running for re-election. Incumbents tend not to be challenged for the nomination by co-partisans and usually go into the general election with the full backing of the party, whereas open-seat contests often result in intra-party splits, renegade candidates, and factional defections. Most local executives are pretty popular, as well. It's just really hard in Taiwan to defeat an incumbent mayor absent a national partisan wave (which, to be fair, occurred both in 2014 and in 2018).
In 2026, the KMT is defending a lot of open seats; 10, to be exact, in New Taipei, Taichung, Hsinchu County, Yilan, Changhua, Yunlin, Chiayi City, Hualien, Taitung, and Kinmen. By contrast, the DPP is defending only three: Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Chiayi County (although Penghu is technically in there too because of Chen Kuang-fu's health concerns). So the playing field is just less favorable to the KMT now than in 2022, and they could lose control of several localities even if the party's net support across all the races still outdistances the DPP.
Third, going into this cycle, the KMT faced a difficult coordination problem with the TPP. As I argued in a series of posts last year, I think these are make-or-break elections for the TPP's future. They need to demonstrate electoral appeal independent of the KMT, and they desperately need to win some local mayor's races in order to improve their party brand, attract and cultivate new talent into the party, and convince pan-blue voters that they are a viable alternative to the KMT. And yet...
(2) TPP-KMT cooperation seems to be holding up well. Surprisingly well! Given the importance to the TPP's future of winning offices this November, and the spectacular failure of the presidential joint-nomination strategy in fall 2023, I expected the party would play hardball with the KMT over nominations. At a minimum, I thought Huang Kuo-chang would demand the KMT support him as the joint nominee in New Taipei in exchange for the TPP dropping bids elsewhere.
But instead, the TPP has (mostly -- the exception is the Jhubei City race) stuck to their joint-nomination polling process. There are no blue-white splits in any of the county-level executive races this cycle, and the TPP's nominees have consistently stood down when they lost the joint polling primary. This has been especially beneficial to the KMT's chances. Of all 22 localities, the only joint blue-white nominee who's from the TPP is in Chiayi City -- very difficulty terrain for the blue camp. The KMT has also yielded in Hsinchu City, where the former TPP member Kao Hung-an is running for re-election. And in Chiayi County, both parties are supporting an independent, Wu Pin-jui. In the other 19 localities, the KMT is running a candidate with backing from the TPP.
So there is much better coordination on nominees on the pan-blue side than I expected. KMT party chairwoman Cheng Li-wun deserves significant credit for working out that deal and getting the TPP to stick with it.
The corollary is that TPP party chairman Huang Kuo-chang is going to deserve a lot of blame for not getting more out of this cooperation agreement. 1 nominee in 22 races is not a great result. And he couldn't even get the KMT to yield in Jhubei City!
(3) The DPP is well-positioned to improve, at least modestly, on their abysmal result in 2022, which would give President Lai a boost. I can easily imagine a scenario in which the DPP wins New Taipei, flips Yilan, Changhua and Chiayi City, and scores two or three upsets elsewhere: say Keelung, Yunlin, and Hsinchu County. That would be a really good result for the party, and it seems entirely plausible right now.
The corollary is that Cheng Li-wun's position as KMT chair looks a little shakier than I thought it would when I started this exercise. The scenario above would be quite bad for Cheng -- maybe not "resign immediately" bad, but enough to erode her influence and dramatically increase the internal party pressure on her. Add in a loss in Hualien or Taitung or somewhere else unexpected, and Cheng probably can't survive as party chair.
On the other hand, a best-case scenario for the KMT (and worst-case for the DPP) would be for the party to win New Taipei in addition to Taichung, Taoyuan and Taipei, hold on to, say, Changhua and Yunlin and win back Penghu, and pull off an upset in Kaohsiung. Then Cheng Li-wun is riding high and strengthens her influence over the party's nominations for 2028. And Lai probably has to resign as DPP party chair and could even face an internal challenge for the presidential nomination.
Credit: NOWNews
(4) The New Taipei race looms large. It's going to shape the narrative of this entire election cycle. If Su Chiao-hui wins there (she's leading in the latest mainstream poll), and the DPP holds on to the localities it runs now and adds pickups in 3-4 others, the narrative will be that the KMT blew it. If Lee Shu-chuan instead wins, it's a very different take-away: the KMT was playing defense and largely held its own.
So New Taipei is the big prize. It's the most populous locality in Taiwan, the DPP has never won it since it became a special municipality, it's got a close partisan balance, and if national issues are going to matter anywhere it will be here. I usually caution against reading too much into the local election results as a harbinger of the upcoming national elections, but this race may have outsized implications for 2028.
(5) Issues...what issues? I realize I haven't talked a lot about issues in the campaigns and instead have focused mostly on candidate quality and factional politics. That's because in local elections there tends to be a split between the big metro races, where partisanship and national trends matter more, and the other city and county races where local ties and factional politics are more often decisive. This cycle looks like it's following that traditional pattern.
At the central government level, most issues are linked to the interminable fighting between the KMT-TPP controlled Legislative Yuan and the DPP-controlled Executive Yuan. Oversight, nominations, and budgets have been the main areas of contention. On oversight, the TPP has been hopping mad that prosecutors arrested Ko Wen-je in 2024, and he's now been tried and convicted. That's made them even less willing to consider engaging with the DPP and reinforced their decision to cooperate with the KMT. On nominations, the two branches have escalated their confrontations to the point that the Constitutional Court, NCC, and Control Yuan are now all paralyzed. And on budgets, the KMT and TPP changed the revenue allocation formula to distribute a larger share to local governments (mostly controlled by the KMT) and away from the central government. They also delayed review of the FY2026 budget for eight months -- it finally passed in early August.
I don't see a whole lot of evidence so far that the consequences of the national-level stalemate are trickling down into local races in a way that would be decisive. The issues that have broken through in the mayor's races don't map neatly onto the partisan divide: a food safety scandal, transportation and economic development, disaster relief and flood control, and corruption. It's plausible that these could affect some of the metro races. For instance, in Taichung outgoing incumbent Lu Shiow-yen has taken criticism for the food scandal, and in Taipei Chiang Wan-an has been increasingly prominent as a critic of the central government over the same scandal. But in most of the other races these national issues don't look to be very salient.
What about the China factor? It's there, for sure, but it's constant background noise in local elections. As we know from the electoral whiplash in the 2018-->2020 and 2022-->2024 cycles, the KMT's political liabilities as the China-friendly party matter a lot more when the presidency and control of the LY are at stake than they do in local mayor and councilor elections.
(6) National Factors Seem Neutral
Right now President Lai's approval rating is about even -- the MyFormosa poll trend above shows him almost dead even as of May, 46-45%. It's notable that he's polling much better than last summer when the KMT won every single recall election. The national anti-incumbent waves of 2014 (Ma Ying-jeou) and 2018 (Tsai Ing-wen) both occurred when the president's popularity was low. So far Lai looks to be avoiding their trajectories, and that puts the DPP's candidates in a better position to make their case on their own merits. The party's brand isn't toxic like it was in 2018.
The NCCU Election Study Center's party ID surveys are now out through June 2026, and they also show a national environment that is not bad for the DPP. Self-identified DPP partisans are up to about 34% of respondents -- that's near an all-time high. The KMT has recovered a bit from their near-record low in 2022 -- probably by pulling back some pan-blue respondents who were attracted to the TPP for a bit -- but they're still over 10 points behind the DPP. And the TPP is pretty clearly in decline, falling from 14% in 2023 to under 9% now. Adding up TPP and KMT partisans gets the pan-blue camp to 30%, close to but still behind the DPP. These data suggest a relatively steady state this election cycle: no signs of swelling or collapsing support for either camp.
Finally, the economy is roaring: Taiwan's annual GDP is estimated to grow at about 11% in 2026. But the gains from that growth are very unequally distributed -- the high-tech sector is doing well on the back of the AI chip boom, while other sectors of the economy remain sluggish, housing costs remain high, and average wages in non-tech sectors remain low. There's not a lot of evidence the DPP is reaping broad political benefits from the tech boom, but neither do I see strong signs the KMT and TPP are capitalizing on economic frustration from those left out.
Update 9.2. The August MyFormosa poll is out. The numbers are similar for President Lai; his satisfaction score is at 46% positive, 44% negative.
From the same survey, the three political party ratings:
- DPP: 41.2% like, 44.5% dislike. Net -3.3 points
- KMT: 27.2% like, 53.7% dislike. Net -26.5 points
- TPP: 23.0% like, 57.4% dislike. Net -34.4 points
Those are not great numbers for any of the big three, but I'd much rather be in the DPP's position three months out.
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Taiwan's 2008 presidential election voting patterns by township.
2012: greener everywhere, although this map doesn't show it very well.
- There wouldn't be a very large incumbent advantage for KMT legislators;
- Tsai's increase in vote share over 2012 would be uniform across districts;
- The electorate voting for president would look essentially the same as that voting for the legislature.
I spent much of the last post defending assumption 1. Here I want to relax assumption 2, that Tsai's vote share is going to increase uniformly across all districts. That's certainly not going to be true in a technical sense, but to what degree will it be violated? The conventional wisdom about Taiwan's electoral geography is that the the north is more solidly blue than other parts of Taiwan, so the KMT's vote share will decline less in Taipei than in, say, Tainan or Pingtung. But how much less is hard to predict.
Let me put the punch line up front: I don't think Tsai's increase in vote share is going to vary much by locality. Evidence follows after the jump.
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Based on first-hand participant-observation, this talk will examine the culture, politics, and spatiality of the Sunflower Movement. Taiwan's most significant social movement in decades, the Sunflower Movement not only blocked the passage of a major trade deal with China, but reshaped popular discourse and redirected Taiwan's political and cultural trajectory. It re-energized student and civil society, precipitated the historic defeat of the KMT in the 2014 local elections, and prefigured the DPP's strong position coming into the 2016 presidential and legislative election season.
The primary spatial tactic of the Sunflowers-- occupation of a government building-- was so successful that a series of protests in the summer of 2015 by high school students was partly conceived and represented as a "second Sunflower Movement". These students, protesting "China-centric" curriculum changes, attempted to occupy the Ministry of Education building. Thwarted by police, these students settled for the front courtyard, where a Sunflower-style pattern of encampments and performances emerged. While this movement did not galvanize the wider public as dramatically as its predecessor, it did demonstrate the staying power of the Sunflower Movement and its occupation tactics for an even younger cohort of activists.
The Sunflower Movement showed that contingent, street-level, grassroots action can have a major impact on Taiwan's cross-Strait policies, and inspired and trained a new generation of youth activists. But with the likely 2016 presidential win of the DPP, which has attempted to draw support from student activists while presenting a less radical vision to mainstream voters, what's in store for the future of Taiwanese student and civic activism? And with strong evidence of growing Taiwanese national identification and pro-independence sentiment, particularly among youth, what's in store for the future of Taiwan's political culture?
Ian Rowen is PhD Candidate in Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and recent Visiting Fellow at the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan, Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology, and Fudan University. He participated in both the Sunflower and Umbrella Movements and has written about them for The Journal of Asian Studies, The Guardian, and The BBC (Chinese), among other outlets. He has also published about Asian politics and protest in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (forthcoming) and the Annals of Tourism Research. His PhD research, funded by the US National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, has focused on the political geography of tourism and protest in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
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Professor Chen is Distinguished Research Fellow at the Election Study Center and Professor of Political Science at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. He is currently a visiting scholar of Top University Strategic Alliance (TUSA) at MIT. Professor Chen received his Ph. D. in political science from Michigan State University. His research focuses on political behavior, political socialization, research methods, and cross-Strait relations. He has published articles in Issues and Studies, Journal of Electoral Studies (in Chinese), Social Science Quarterly, and Taiwan Political Science Review (in Chinese). He is the editor of Continuity and Change in Taiwan's 2012 Presidential and Legislative Election (in Chinese, 2013), Public Opinion Polls (in Chinese, 2013), and co-edited The 2008 Presidential Election: A Critical Election on Second Turnover (in Chinese, with Chi Huang and Ching-hsin Yu, 2009).
Cross-Strait relations play an important role in electoral politics in Taiwan. Increasing economic exchange together with warming political engagements make today’s cross-Strait relations a very unique case in the study of public opinion in Taiwan. Because of the economic prosperity of China, people in Taiwan might consider the expansion of trade and other forms of cross-Strait exchanges beneficial to the prosperity of Taiwan. However, growing trade ties also mean that Taiwan’s economic reliance on the mainland increases day by day, and it could eventually result in political unification—an outcome that the majority of people in Taiwan do not want. The long-standing antagonism across the Strait, especially visible in their different governing systems and ideological attitudes, has produced something close to two separate countries and contrasting national identities. Dr. Chen was former Director of Election Study Center of National Chengchi University in Taiwan, and he will present long-term polling tracks to demonstrate how cross-Strait relations have affected electoral politics in Taiwan.
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DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ying-wen at a campaign rally in November 2011; she lost the 2012 presidential election to Ma Ying-jeou, 51.6-45.6%
Equally striking was the swing away from the KMT at lower levels, where the party’s candidates have traditionally been more insulated from national trends: the number of KMT councilors dropped from 419 to 386 (out of 907), and KMT township heads fell from 121 to 80 (out of 204). The KMT now holds a majority on only 6 of 23 city and county councils—remarkable for a party that could once count on control of the vast majority of local offices to help it mobilize votes for national elections. The consistent swing away from the KMT across every jurisdiction in Taiwan suggests that this was a “wave” election—unhappiness with the ruling party and its chairman, President Ma Ying-jeou, drove a national slump in KMT support that showed up in vote totals nearly everywhere. Indeed, this was arguably the KMT’s worst-ever performance in a local election: only 1997 comes close, and the fact that all local offices were on the ballot this year, including the special municipalities, makes this a more consequential defeat than that election. (These figures are drawn from a presentation I gave at a Stanford roundtable on December 2; the slides from that talk are available here.)
It’s a little late for me to weigh in on the debate over why the KMT fared so badly—plenty of other people have done that already, and the impact is rapidly fading into the past as Taiwanese politics churns along. Instead, in this post I want to look forward and ask: what does the 2014 election tell us about future election outcomes in Taiwan, especially the 2016 presidential race?
The unquestioned assumption in most commentary in Taiwan is that the KMT’s recent electoral rout bodes poorly for its chances in the coming presidential and legislative elections, now tentatively set for January 2016. Some commentators have argued that the 2014 result indicates a fundamental electoral “breakthrough” for the DPP, rather than a temporary shift away from the KMT due to recent scandals and the unpopularity of President Ma, and that the DPP should be the favorite going into 2016.
This is not self-evident. To see why, we need only look at the last time around. In the last local elections in 2009-10, the DPP’s candidates for county and city executives actually won more total votes than did the KMT: 5,755,287 to 5,463,570. That turned out not to presage a DPP victory in the presidential race in 2012: Tsai Ying-wen lost to Ma Ying-jeou 51.6% to 45.6%.
Why the big difference? One reason is simply that they were held at different times: Taiwan was in a major recession (as was much of the world) in 2009-10, whereas by 2012 economic growth had bounced back. Another is that the relative importance of factors affecting mass voting behavior in local elections is different from national ones: ideological positioning and the state of the national economy, among other things, are likely to play a stronger role in vote choice in 2016 than they did in the local elections. The personal qualities of the candidates matter, too, and there’s always the possibility of a third candidate emerging as a serious contender, as happened in the 2000 presidential election.
So, until we know who the candidates are, what platforms they'll run on, and how the economy is likely to be doing, we should be cautious about forecasting a win for either major party. Nevertheless, might the 2014 elections at least tell us something meaningful about the relative appeal of the DPP and KMT right now? If we assume all the other factors will cancel each other out, doesn't the last election tell us the DPP will enjoy a generic partisan advantage going into 2016?
Not necessarily, and the reason is turnout. In general, it's 10-15 percent higher in presidential elections than local ones. If these extra voters who show up at the polls in presidential elections disproportionately support the KMT, then the local results are going to give an underestimate of the KMT’s expected vote share in 2016. So it would be nice to know how much of the DPP's success is due to KMT-leaning voters staying home, versus the DPP winning more votes. To figure that out, we need to dig into the raw vote totals a little more.
Let’s start with the basic numbers. Here are the turnout figures for 2012 and 2014:
- 2012: 13,452,016 votes cast, or 74.4 percent of all eligible voters;
- 2014: 12,512,135, or 67.6 percent.
Now, how about the partisan breakdown? Here's the vote totals for each party in 2012 (presidential election) and 2014 (county/city executives):
- 2012: Tsai Ying-wen (DPP): 6,093,578
- 2012: Ma Ying-jeou (KMT): 6,891,139
- 2014: DPP candidates: 6,684,089*
- 2014: KMT candidates: 4,990,667
Notably, the DPP candidates (including Ko Wen-je) together polled almost 600,000 votes more than Tsai did in the 2012 presidential race, even as turnout declined! So while the KMT had a disastrous drop from 2012 to 2014, there was also a significant increase in support for the DPP in 2014 above and beyond its support in the presidential election. Clearly, this is not just a story about asymmetric turnout of each party's base supporters, with pan-Blue voters sitting this one out. Instead, the DPP appears to have made big absolute gains as well: the party's vote total in 2014 was only about 200,000 short of what Ma Ying-jeou won in 2012, in a higher-turnout election.
(For those interested in digging further into the numbers, I've put all these data in an Excel file, which can be accessed below):
There's one caveat to this conclusion, and it's a big one: the result in Taipei was quite anomalous. Ko Wen-je in Taipei ran as an independent and deliberately avoided associating too closely with the DPP during the campaign, and the KMT's candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) was a particularly poor nominee. In 2016, the DPP is not going to be able to replicate what Ko did and carry Taipei by over 200,000 votes. Given Taipei's size, we're clearly overestimating the DPP's probable support if we count all the votes for Ko in 2014 as likely votes for the DPP in 2016. On the other hand, there were several other counties where the DPP didn't run a candidate; the party will undoubtedly add some votes in these places in 2016. Any inference about 2016 depends among other things on the net effect among these jurisdictions.
To get a better sense of the size of this effect, I took out the votes from the five "oddball" jurisdictions where the DPP did not run a candidate: Taipei, Hsinchu County, Hualien, Lienchiang, and Kinmen. The comparison of vote totals in the other, "normal" jurisdictions is below:
- Tsai 2012 (minus oddballs): 5,321,816
- DPP 2014 (minus oddballs): 5,830,106
So in the places where it ran a candidate, the DPP bested its 2012 vote total by over 500,000. That's especially impressive because there were double-digit declines in turnout from 2012 in New Taipei, Taoyuan, Tainan, and Kaohsiung. If the DPP candidate in 2016 can repeat the performance of the party's candidates in 2014, then 5.83 million votes is a conservative estimate of its vote total in these places in the next presidential election.
But what about the oddball places? Let's imagine that the DPP had run candidates in all these jurisdictions, and then assume that they performed as well on average as DPP candidates did elsewhere. In other words, assume that the increase in votes for the DPP in the oddball places would be proportional to the increase in the other, non-oddball places. That is:
DPP's net vote increase in normal jurisdictions, 2012 to 2014: 508,290
Total votes in normal jurisdictions, 2012: 11,246,356
Fraction increase: 0.045
Net increase in oddball jurisdictions, 2012 to 2014: X
Total votes in oddball jurisdictions, 2012: 2,107,949.
X is then 0.045*2,107,949, or 95,271 votes.
The Tsai campaign in 2012 won 771,762 votes in the oddball cases, so adding these up we get an estimate for 2014 of:
771,762 + 95,271 = 867,033.
Thus,
Non-oddball 2014 vote total: 5,830,106
Oddball 2014 vote estimate: 867,033
Estimated 2014 DPP vote total if candidates ran everywhere: 6,697,139.
So, in a hypothetical scenario in which the DPP ran candidates everywhere, the party's vote total for 2014 would be 6,697,139. That is just under 200,000 votes short of what Ma Ying-jeou won but about 600,000 more than what Tsai won in 2012. It's also higher than any DPP presidential candidate has ever won in the past--Chen Shui-bian's vote total of 6,446,900 in 2004 is the previous high-water mark for the party. For a "local" election with a turnout rate well below the last presidential election, that number is eye-opening. It's a clear indication that the DPP didn't win just because pan-Blue voters stayed home while pan-Green voters all showed up; instead, if you accept the calculations above, the DPP in effect captured more votes than it has ever won before, in any election, presidential, legislative, or local.
Generic Conditions Favor a DPP Win in 2016
Given that, the DPP should probably be viewed as a slight favorite to win the presidency in 2016 even under generic conditions--two high-profile, appealing candidates, a neutral economic environment, moderate ideological position-taking, and the absence of serious third-party challengers. Those are big "ifs": a lot can change over the next year. But it seems more likely that they will change for the worse rather than for the better for the KMT.
For one, while the DPP seems set to nominate Tsai Ying-wen again, the KMT does not have any obvious presidential contender waiting in the wings beyond Eric Chu. If he decides not to run, whoever the KMT nominee is will start at a serious disadvantage in name recognition and personal appeal. And if Chu does decide to run, he will probably need to put considerable distance between himself and the incumbent president in order to have a serious shot at winning. President Ma's approval ratings, and those of the Executive Yuan, have been consistently under 20 percent for most of his second term, giving the DPP the opportunity to frame the election as an anti-Ma vote as much as a pro-DPP one.
So, bottom line: unless there are major surprises over the next year, the 2014 election results suggest that Taiwan's next president will likely be from the DPP. For a party that has itself been on the receiving end of several electoral drubbings over the last decade, it's a remarkable political recovery.
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Panel speakers will include Dennis Weng, visiting assistant professor of political science at Wesleyan University; Thomas Fingar, a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University; Winnie Lin, a Stanford undergraduate; and me. Some context on the elections follows.
In recent years, on the other hand, the trend has been toward consolidation. A set of amendments in 2005 changed the legislative term length from three to four years to coincide with the presidential term, and starting in 2012 both elections were held on the same day, creating a single national election every four years. The National Assembly was abolished in the same reform. Then county and county-level city terms were temporarily extended to align with the election cycle of the special municipalities of Taipei and Kaohsiung, for the first time creating a single local election day:
The races to be decided in the 2014 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, 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).
In addition, about 25 township-level jurisdictions with significant "mountain aborigine" populations hold special status as "self-governing" areas (自治區). In a nod to the special status of aborigines in Taiwan, local government laws require that the township heads in these areas be aborigine. This became a point of some contestation after several counties (Taipei County, Taichung City and County, and Kaohsiung City and County) were merged and raised to centrally-administered municipality status in 2009. As part of this reform, townships and towns in these areas became districts (區), which have appointed, not elected, leaders. As a consequence, several self-governing townships lost the right to elect their leaders--Wulai Township, a popular tourist destination a short trip south of Taipei, was one.
In December 2013 the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment to restore the right to elect the leaders and councilors of these former townships. As a consequence, two more elections were added:
- (8) Self-governing district heads and (9) representatives (自治區長，區代表).
So that's how they got to "9-in-1".
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Taiwan has a reputation as being fairly tolerant towards homosexuality, contrasting favorably with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and especially mainland China, and if the bill passes, it would make Taiwan the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. So the sizable turnout for the anti-gay-marriage protest has attracted a lot of international coverage, including pieces in the Economist and AFP, as well as U.S.-based advocates on both sides of the issue. Perhaps less well-known is that Taiwan has a significant Christian community, estimated at between 4-5% of the population, that has played a disproportionately large role in Taiwan's post-war political history. Christian evangelical churches, a newer phenomenon in Taiwan, played a central role in organizing the counter-demonstration, as this blog post details.
The battle over nominations is also uncovering old factional fault lines within the DPP. Especially striking is the success of the New Tide faction (新潮流派系)--the nominees for Pingtung, Changhua, Nantou, and Yunlin Counties all have ties to the faction, and another New Tide member, Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌), is battling for the nomination in Taichung City.
The DPP's nomination for Taipei City has yet to be decided, but Wellington Koo (顧立雄) is drawing endorsements from many New Tide members as well. He's going up against another "old face" in the DPP: former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮). The best candidate the DPP could run, according to polls, is National Taiwan University physician Ko Wen-je (柯文哲). There's only one problem: Ko is not a party member, wants to remain independent, and recently called the DPP "chaotic and dangerous", while at the same time looking increasingly likely to run. If the DPP can't persuade Ko to join the party, it will face an unpalatable choice between running a spoiler candidate and not running one at all. The fight over the Taipei nomination has signs of being a proxy battle for the 2016 presidential nomination: current DPP chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌 ) appears to favor Koo, while 2012 nominee Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been linked to Ko.
On the KMT side, Sean Lien (連勝文) is still polling better than anyone else and looks to have the inside track on the nomination if he wants it. His stiffest potential challenge would probably be from current New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), who might be interested in switching seats to improve his presidential prospects.
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For the time being, Wang retains his seat but has been barred from participating in KMT party activities. The attempt to expel him has laid bare some serious tensions within the ruling KMT, forcing a delay in the party's planned 19th party conference that was scheduled to begin on September 29.
Gang of Five. A weekly policy meeting of five key figures in the KMT--president Ma, vice president Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), KMT secretary-general Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權), and legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng--will resume, with KMT legislative caucus whip Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) taking Wang's place. The move is one of several that appear intended to further isolate Wang and his allies in the party and consolidate president Ma's authority, as well as improve cooperation between the executive and legislative branches. Of particular note is that Wang's allies potentially include the former vice president and presidential candidate Lien Chan (連戰) and his son, Sean Lien (連勝文).
On Wednesday, Ker got his chance to fire back when Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) testified before the legislature. At least one KMT legislator is not so happy about the existence of wiretapping, either. One thing to keep an eye on is whether more KMT legislators eventually push back publicly against the executive branch, or whether the shared interest in protecting the institutional authority of the legislature is trumped by party loyalty.
In the New Taipei City race, former DPP premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) announced this week that he would seek the party's nomination. He joins former legislator Chuang Suo-hang (莊碩漢) as announced candidates. New Taipei DPP party chief Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) is also openly considering a bid. The incumbent mayor, Eric Chu (朱立倫) of the KMT, is eligible to run again but may run for Taipei mayor instead. He is also frequently mentioned as a leading candidate for the 2016 presidential election.