- Published on
The Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region at the Hoover Institution hosted Contested Taiwan: Sovereignty, Social Movements, and Party Formations, a book talk with the author Lev Nachman of National Taiwan University, on Monday, October 20, 2025, from 4:00-5:30 PM PT at Herbert Hoover Memorial Building, Room 160.
ABSTRACT
Despite maintaining de facto sovereignty, states like Taiwan find themselves unrecognized in today’s international system because another power claims the state as part of its territory. This fraught status, in turn, significantly affects the domestic politics of these places.Contested Taiwan explores Taiwan’s political landscape after the 2014 Sunflower Movement and brings a fresh perspective to understanding social movement mobilization and political party formation in “contested states.” In these states, political cleavages are defined not by traditional left-right issues but by questions of identity, territory, and what to do about the country that claims them. Drawing from 150 interviews with Taiwanese activists and politicians, as well as a comparative analysis of Ukraine, Nachman reveals that traditional political science theories fall short when explaining the formation of movement parties in such contexts. Instead, he argues that looming existential threats and strained relationships between activists and established pro-independence parties drive social movements into formal political arenas.
ABSTRACT
Despite maintaining de facto sovereignty, states like Taiwan find themselves unrecognized in today’s international system because another power claims the state as part of its territory. This fraught status, in turn, significantly affects the domestic politics of these places.Contested Taiwan explores Taiwan’s political landscape after the 2014 Sunflower Movement and brings a fresh perspective to understanding social movement mobilization and political party formation in “contested states.” In these states, political cleavages are defined not by traditional left-right issues but by questions of identity, territory, and what to do about the country that claims them. Drawing from 150 interviews with Taiwanese activists and politicians, as well as a comparative analysis of Ukraine, Nachman reveals that traditional political science theories fall short when explaining the formation of movement parties in such contexts. Instead, he argues that looming existential threats and strained relationships between activists and established pro-independence parties drive social movements into formal political arenas.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Lev Nachman is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate Institute of National Development at National Taiwan University. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Irvine in 2021, and was previously the Hou Family Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard Fairbank Center. His work focuses on political participation in Taiwan and Hong Kong and US-Taiwan relations. His publications span both disciplinary and regional academic journals, including Asian Survey and Political Research Quarterly. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council Global China Hub and the National Bureau of Asian Research, and regularly comments on contemporary Taiwanese politics. His work has been featured in various media outlets including the New York Times, CNN, and Foreign Affairs.
Lev Nachman is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate Institute of National Development at National Taiwan University. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Irvine in 2021, and was previously the Hou Family Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard Fairbank Center. His work focuses on political participation in Taiwan and Hong Kong and US-Taiwan relations. His publications span both disciplinary and regional academic journals, including Asian Survey and Political Research Quarterly. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council Global China Hub and the National Bureau of Asian Research, and regularly comments on contemporary Taiwanese politics. His work has been featured in various media outlets including the New York Times, CNN, and Foreign Affairs.
- Published on
Ever notice that the shape of Taiwan looks suspiciously like a body-snatcher pod?!
In the 1956 horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a small-town doctor (played by the inimitable Kevin McCarthy -- no not that Kevin McCarthy) discovers that people in his town are being replaced by emotionless, alien-controlled duplicates grown from plant-like pods. These "pod people" take over human bodies and erase their original personalities. As more and more of the townspeople are replaced, the doctor becomes increasingly desperate to warn the the community, but his pleas are met with skepticism, and then creepy indifference. The movie ends with the pod people, who now make up almost all of the town, chasing the doctor into a highway, where he spots a passing truck filled with yet more pods destined for who knows where. In the final scene he looks at the camera in panic and screams "You're next!!!"
(The 1978 remake, set in San Francisco, is great, too -- including a cameo by the original Kevin McCarthy and a memorable performance by Donald Sutherland).
(The 1978 remake, set in San Francisco, is great, too -- including a cameo by the original Kevin McCarthy and a memorable performance by Donald Sutherland).
Can the TPP Snatch Away the KMT Vote?
In previous posts I speculated that the Taiwan People Party's (TPP) long-term growth strategy is different from other Taiwanese third parties that have come before. It has started in the center of the political spectrum rather than on one of the flanks. And it is now aiming to attract new support from the KMT's (mostly older) base while holding onto its (mostly younger) supporters.
It is, in other words, pursuing a party-snatching strategy.
Now, I should have noted at the outset of these posts that this broader observation about the TPP's strategy is not in any way, shape or form unique to me; people in Taiwan have been ascribing some version of this motive to the party almost since the day Ko Wen-je founded the TPP in 2019. (For examples, see here, here, here, here, and here).
I should also note there's a long tradition of wishcasting for a new "third force" to emerge in Taiwan politics that would break up the green-blue divide, eliminate the KMT, and realign politics around competition among multiple "Taiwan-centric" parties (in this framing the KMT is almost always described as "pro-China," pro-unification, or even pro-CCP), and compete with what these advocates see as an increasingly conservative and even plutocratic DPP. For a while after it was founded, the TPP looked like the most promising candidate to pull this off, which may explain some of the vitriol directed towards Ko and now new party leader Huang Kuo-chang for their cooperation with the KMT over the last year.
But assertions that the KMT's destruction would come at the hands of a "third force" that was both more pro-independence and more progressive than the DPP have never made much sense to me, because they never spelled out exactly how the KMT's core supporters would be persuaded to switch to a new party whose positions on the China issue are so far away from their own. For instance, despite all the bravado surrounding the emergence of the NPP out of the Sunflower Movement, it always presented a much larger electoral threat to the DPP than the KMT -- one that Tsai Ing-wen as party chair recognized and smartly headed off through a pre-electoral coalition in 2016. The KMT has long had many electoral problems, but losing chunks of its base to upstart progressive pro-independence parties has never been a big concern for it.
Instead, the biggest threats to the KMT in the past have come from party defectors who walk and talk a lot like the official nominees but reject control from the party leadership -- think Terry Gou, or James Soong, or way back in the 1990s, Lin Yang-kang and Hau Pei-tsun. So if you want to build a party that can convince life-time KMT supporters to defect en masse in a national election, that party has to look a lot like the KMT. It has to be firmly in the pan-blue camp. It has to take a position on the China question that is more China-friendly than the DPP. And most of all, it has to actively oppose the DPP at every turn--despise it, even.
I do not think it is a coincidence that the TPP is looking more and more like this party. I am skeptical they can actually succeed in causing a political realignment in which they replace the KMT as one of the Big Two. But they are certainly behaving in a way that makes sense if this is their ultimate goal. And, given Taiwan's institutional context, it is probably the TPP's best shot to survive past the next election.
In previous posts I speculated that the Taiwan People Party's (TPP) long-term growth strategy is different from other Taiwanese third parties that have come before. It has started in the center of the political spectrum rather than on one of the flanks. And it is now aiming to attract new support from the KMT's (mostly older) base while holding onto its (mostly younger) supporters.
It is, in other words, pursuing a party-snatching strategy.
Now, I should have noted at the outset of these posts that this broader observation about the TPP's strategy is not in any way, shape or form unique to me; people in Taiwan have been ascribing some version of this motive to the party almost since the day Ko Wen-je founded the TPP in 2019. (For examples, see here, here, here, here, and here).
I should also note there's a long tradition of wishcasting for a new "third force" to emerge in Taiwan politics that would break up the green-blue divide, eliminate the KMT, and realign politics around competition among multiple "Taiwan-centric" parties (in this framing the KMT is almost always described as "pro-China," pro-unification, or even pro-CCP), and compete with what these advocates see as an increasingly conservative and even plutocratic DPP. For a while after it was founded, the TPP looked like the most promising candidate to pull this off, which may explain some of the vitriol directed towards Ko and now new party leader Huang Kuo-chang for their cooperation with the KMT over the last year.
But assertions that the KMT's destruction would come at the hands of a "third force" that was both more pro-independence and more progressive than the DPP have never made much sense to me, because they never spelled out exactly how the KMT's core supporters would be persuaded to switch to a new party whose positions on the China issue are so far away from their own. For instance, despite all the bravado surrounding the emergence of the NPP out of the Sunflower Movement, it always presented a much larger electoral threat to the DPP than the KMT -- one that Tsai Ing-wen as party chair recognized and smartly headed off through a pre-electoral coalition in 2016. The KMT has long had many electoral problems, but losing chunks of its base to upstart progressive pro-independence parties has never been a big concern for it.
Instead, the biggest threats to the KMT in the past have come from party defectors who walk and talk a lot like the official nominees but reject control from the party leadership -- think Terry Gou, or James Soong, or way back in the 1990s, Lin Yang-kang and Hau Pei-tsun. So if you want to build a party that can convince life-time KMT supporters to defect en masse in a national election, that party has to look a lot like the KMT. It has to be firmly in the pan-blue camp. It has to take a position on the China question that is more China-friendly than the DPP. And most of all, it has to actively oppose the DPP at every turn--despise it, even.
I do not think it is a coincidence that the TPP is looking more and more like this party. I am skeptical they can actually succeed in causing a political realignment in which they replace the KMT as one of the Big Two. But they are certainly behaving in a way that makes sense if this is their ultimate goal. And, given Taiwan's institutional context, it is probably the TPP's best shot to survive past the next election.
Party System Realignments as Coordination Games
My thinking about this possibility has been influenced a lot by Gary Cox's work on elections as coordination games. The classic illustration of a coordination game is the so-called Battle of the Sexes. In this game, a man and a woman must independently choose whether to attend a baseball game or an opera performance. The man prefers the baseball game, while the woman prefers the opera, but both would rather spend time together than go to their preferred entertainment alone.
Putting aside the unfortunate sexist stereotypes of this example, the essence of a coordination problem is nicely demonstrated here; to quote Cox, "the players in the game would prefer to coordinate their actions on...one of two...possibilities, but they disagree over which of these possibilities ought to be the one on which they coordinate. There is thus an admixture of common and divergent interests, and the possibility of both successful coordination (to the relative advantage of one or more of the players over the others) and failed coordination (to the disadvantage of all)."
Later in the book, Cox considers the possibility of partisan realignments as coordination problems. "Realignment projects," he writes, "require that a large number of politicians and voters change their behavior in a coordinated fashion." And not all realignments are equally plausible or consequential. Realignments in majoritarian electoral systems, Cox suggests, are both more difficult to pull off and more consequential if they succeed or fail. He illustrates the point with a discussion of the Liberal Party in Great Britain in the 1910s and 1920s, and the attempt by its dominant figure, David Lloyd George, to realign British politics along a socialist/anti-socialist axis.
In Cox's telling, Lloyd George attempted to manipulate perceptions of the potential alternatives to the Liberal Party, which he believed to be facing an existential threat from the rise of the Labour Party. As prime minister leading a war-time coalition government, Lloyd George used his privileged position to communicate with his own Liberals and members of the Conservative Party to try to convince them to join forces after the end of World War I against Labour. His efforts to achieve an anti-Labour coalition had their greatest success in the December 1918 "Coupon Election," when the coalition Liberal-Conservative government that had just won the war endorsed a subset of members from both parties, isolating and defeating the Liberal faction led by Lloyd George's predecessor and rival, H.H. Asquith. But the coalition eventually broke apart in 1922, and the subsequent election saw the Conservatives contest and win on their own. The Liberals were reduced to minor party status and never recovered their previous position, as voters opposed to Labour converged on Conservative, rather than Liberal, candidates. And Lloyd George never again served in government.
Cox portrays this failed attempt as a specific example of a realignment coordination game, with Lloyd George serving in the critical role of a "heresthetician" (to use William Riker's term) or "focal arbiter" (Thomas Schelling's):
Putting aside the unfortunate sexist stereotypes of this example, the essence of a coordination problem is nicely demonstrated here; to quote Cox, "the players in the game would prefer to coordinate their actions on...one of two...possibilities, but they disagree over which of these possibilities ought to be the one on which they coordinate. There is thus an admixture of common and divergent interests, and the possibility of both successful coordination (to the relative advantage of one or more of the players over the others) and failed coordination (to the disadvantage of all)."
Later in the book, Cox considers the possibility of partisan realignments as coordination problems. "Realignment projects," he writes, "require that a large number of politicians and voters change their behavior in a coordinated fashion." And not all realignments are equally plausible or consequential. Realignments in majoritarian electoral systems, Cox suggests, are both more difficult to pull off and more consequential if they succeed or fail. He illustrates the point with a discussion of the Liberal Party in Great Britain in the 1910s and 1920s, and the attempt by its dominant figure, David Lloyd George, to realign British politics along a socialist/anti-socialist axis.
In Cox's telling, Lloyd George attempted to manipulate perceptions of the potential alternatives to the Liberal Party, which he believed to be facing an existential threat from the rise of the Labour Party. As prime minister leading a war-time coalition government, Lloyd George used his privileged position to communicate with his own Liberals and members of the Conservative Party to try to convince them to join forces after the end of World War I against Labour. His efforts to achieve an anti-Labour coalition had their greatest success in the December 1918 "Coupon Election," when the coalition Liberal-Conservative government that had just won the war endorsed a subset of members from both parties, isolating and defeating the Liberal faction led by Lloyd George's predecessor and rival, H.H. Asquith. But the coalition eventually broke apart in 1922, and the subsequent election saw the Conservatives contest and win on their own. The Liberals were reduced to minor party status and never recovered their previous position, as voters opposed to Labour converged on Conservative, rather than Liberal, candidates. And Lloyd George never again served in government.
Cox portrays this failed attempt as a specific example of a realignment coordination game, with Lloyd George serving in the critical role of a "heresthetician" (to use William Riker's term) or "focal arbiter" (Thomas Schelling's):
“The key feature of such a game is that there are multiple possible equilibria and that which one is chosen depends crucially on which one people expect to be chosen. Moreover, the more people there are who act in accord with a given equilibrium (e.g., that the two major parties are Labour and the Conservatives), the more it is in the interest of others to act in accord with that equilibrium. The consequence of these two features is that manipulating expectations - something that great leaders,
with their bully pulpits, are in a position to do - can powerfully affect the course of events, leading to fairly rapid and important changes in regime.”
Why am I going on about this example from early 20th century Britain? Well, I think there are some useful parallels here with Taiwan.
First, in both cases there is a party that the protagonists view as being in long-term decline because of shifting demographics -- the Liberals in the UK and the KMT in Taiwan. Second, in both there is high PSI, high nationalization, and a majoritarian electoral system -- less majoritarian in Taiwan than in the UK circa 1920, but as I noted in Part 2, still sufficiently so to deny a third party much of a future unless it replaces one of the Big Two parties. And third, one of the Big Two parties looks like a lot harder target to break apart than the other -- Labour in the UK, and the DPP in Taiwan.
I also find this framework helpful for clarifying the challenge Ko Wen-je faced as he sought to win the presidency in 2024. As mayor of Taipei for two terms, and then the leader of the TPP, Ko had a prominent position from which to try to reshape expectations among both political elites and the mass public about his electoral viability. He first tried to leverage this platform to convince KMT elites to coordinate on him for the presidential election--apparently under the belief that KMT leaders would recognize him, not Hou Yu-ih, as the stronger general election candidate. When that attempt failed, he then fell back on trying to persuade pan-blue voters to coordinate on him rather than Hou. Unfortunately for both Ko and Hou, that didn't happen: the anti-Lai vote ended up split between both. And doubly unfortunate for Ko, that split favored Hou over him; pan-blue and swing voters did not support him in large enough numbers even to bump him into second place.
So that left Ko and the TPP with a fairly hollow result: despite doing better than any third-party presidential candidate since James Soong in 2000, and winning a critical block of seats in the LY, the TPP still didn't eclipse the KMT in either the presidential or the LY PR vote. And in the current legislature, they may have the most influence that any third party has ever had -- but they're still the third party, not the second. To have a future, they need to move into second place. And the best way to do that is not self-evident.
Now, if you were leading the TPP, how would you try to grow from here? What Ko -- and now Huang Kuo-chang, since he has replaced Ko as party chair -- seem to have decided on is to try to execute a realignment of pan-blue voters away from the KMT and to the TPP. If that really is their ultimate goal, then they need to execute a two-pronged and somewhat contradictory strategy. First, they need to convince pan-blue voters that the TPP is one of them. And second, they need to find ways to weaken the KMT, or at least change core supporters' perceptions of the party, to the point that it looks less viable than the TPP in SMD elections -- the mayor's races in 2026, and the presidential and SMD LY races in 2028.
I think we can see evidence of both prongs of this strategy in the TPP's behavior over the last year. I'll pick that up in Part 4.
First, in both cases there is a party that the protagonists view as being in long-term decline because of shifting demographics -- the Liberals in the UK and the KMT in Taiwan. Second, in both there is high PSI, high nationalization, and a majoritarian electoral system -- less majoritarian in Taiwan than in the UK circa 1920, but as I noted in Part 2, still sufficiently so to deny a third party much of a future unless it replaces one of the Big Two parties. And third, one of the Big Two parties looks like a lot harder target to break apart than the other -- Labour in the UK, and the DPP in Taiwan.
I also find this framework helpful for clarifying the challenge Ko Wen-je faced as he sought to win the presidency in 2024. As mayor of Taipei for two terms, and then the leader of the TPP, Ko had a prominent position from which to try to reshape expectations among both political elites and the mass public about his electoral viability. He first tried to leverage this platform to convince KMT elites to coordinate on him for the presidential election--apparently under the belief that KMT leaders would recognize him, not Hou Yu-ih, as the stronger general election candidate. When that attempt failed, he then fell back on trying to persuade pan-blue voters to coordinate on him rather than Hou. Unfortunately for both Ko and Hou, that didn't happen: the anti-Lai vote ended up split between both. And doubly unfortunate for Ko, that split favored Hou over him; pan-blue and swing voters did not support him in large enough numbers even to bump him into second place.
So that left Ko and the TPP with a fairly hollow result: despite doing better than any third-party presidential candidate since James Soong in 2000, and winning a critical block of seats in the LY, the TPP still didn't eclipse the KMT in either the presidential or the LY PR vote. And in the current legislature, they may have the most influence that any third party has ever had -- but they're still the third party, not the second. To have a future, they need to move into second place. And the best way to do that is not self-evident.
Now, if you were leading the TPP, how would you try to grow from here? What Ko -- and now Huang Kuo-chang, since he has replaced Ko as party chair -- seem to have decided on is to try to execute a realignment of pan-blue voters away from the KMT and to the TPP. If that really is their ultimate goal, then they need to execute a two-pronged and somewhat contradictory strategy. First, they need to convince pan-blue voters that the TPP is one of them. And second, they need to find ways to weaken the KMT, or at least change core supporters' perceptions of the party, to the point that it looks less viable than the TPP in SMD elections -- the mayor's races in 2026, and the presidential and SMD LY races in 2028.
I think we can see evidence of both prongs of this strategy in the TPP's behavior over the last year. I'll pick that up in Part 4.
- Published on
TPP legislators call for public streaming of court activities / Taipei Times
In the previous post, I described what I think is the biggest mystery in Taiwan politics right now: the behavior of the Taiwan People's Party. The party is the kingmaker in the legislature but doesn't appear to have maximized its leverage over the last 18 months, and I have had trouble understanding what its strategy is.
I think I understand now. The TPP is all-in on votes, not offices or policy, but they are pursuing votes in an unusual way: rather than try to pull equally from both blue and green camps, which is what most observers thought they were doing in the run-up to 2024, they are now prioritizing pan-blue votes. The reason is that they are trying to take over the KMT's space in the political spectrum through a fundamental realignment of the pan-blue camp.
So, rather than be a swing bloc in the legislature jumping between the camps issue by issue, they have instead decided for the moment to mimic the KMT. Even though most of their members are not ideologically aligned with the KMT--especially on the China issue--they nevertheless need to sound and act like a pan-blue party because they want deep blue voters to consider voting for their candidates in the future.
To see both the rationale for this kind of strategy in Taiwan, and why the party's recent behavior and rhetoric makes sense if replacing the KMT is their ultimate goal, we first need to understand the political context in which they are operating.
I think I understand now. The TPP is all-in on votes, not offices or policy, but they are pursuing votes in an unusual way: rather than try to pull equally from both blue and green camps, which is what most observers thought they were doing in the run-up to 2024, they are now prioritizing pan-blue votes. The reason is that they are trying to take over the KMT's space in the political spectrum through a fundamental realignment of the pan-blue camp.
So, rather than be a swing bloc in the legislature jumping between the camps issue by issue, they have instead decided for the moment to mimic the KMT. Even though most of their members are not ideologically aligned with the KMT--especially on the China issue--they nevertheless need to sound and act like a pan-blue party because they want deep blue voters to consider voting for their candidates in the future.
To see both the rationale for this kind of strategy in Taiwan, and why the party's recent behavior and rhetoric makes sense if replacing the KMT is their ultimate goal, we first need to understand the political context in which they are operating.
Third Parties In Taiwan Face Distinct Disadvantages
There are three things about Taiwan's party system that make it rather distinct among young democracies, and hard for third parties to survive for long:
1. It has high party system institutionalization. Taiwan is unusual among young democracies in having a well-institutionalized party system. Party system institutionalization, or PSI, is the extent to which a party system is stable, predictable, and characterized by established patterns of interaction between political parties. We can measure PSI by looking at electoral volatility across elections, at the level of partisanship in the electorate, and the degree of coherence and organization of the individual political parties. On all these measures, Taiwan looks more like a mature democracy than a young Third Wave one -- it has relatively low electoral volatility, high partisanship, and well-organized and hierarchical political parties that compete with one another almost everywhere.
2. It tends toward two-partism. Taiwan's effective number of parties (ENPs) in the legislature this term is 2.38. Since the new electoral system was used for the first time in 2008, this number has never exceeded 2.5: it was 2.44 in 2020; 2.17 in 2016, 2.23 in 2012, and 1.75 in 2008. The same two parties that finished 1-2 in 1992, the KMT and DPP, finished 2-1 in 2024, and they have been the top two vote and seat-winners in every legislative election in between. They also are almost always the top two finishers in mayoral races around the island. There are not many other Third Wave democracies that have had such a consistent pattern of two-party competition, and even among older democracies, the persistence of the same two parties winning in every election for 30 years is quite unusual.
3. Voting patterns are highly nationalized. Party system nationalization refers to how consistent voting patterns are across a country. It has two components: static nationalization, or how much party vote shares vary across different localities or regions, and dynamic nationalization, or how much vote swings between the parties vary across these same jurisdictions. On the first, static, nationalization measure, although the two major parties have regional strongholds -- the DPP in the south, the KMT in the rural north, east coast, and offshore islands -- they both compete everywhere. There is no regionally-based party akin to the Parti Quebecois in Canada, or the Scottish National Party in the UK, or DMK, Shiv Sena, or Trinamool Congress Party (among many) in India. Nor do Taiwan's regional party strongholds look anywhere near as extreme as South Korea's, where the liberal camp routinely wins 80+% of the vote in the southwest (Jeolla), and the conservative camp wins 80+% in the southeast (Gyeongsang). And on the second, dynamic, nationalization measure, the swing between the DPP and KMT in each election has been remarkably consistent across the island. For instance, in the 2016 election, Tsai Ing-wen improved her vote share over her 2012 campaign in every single jurisdiction in Taiwan, and that increase varied only from about 5% in Penghu to about 12% in Taipei.
Why does Taiwan's party system look this way? Three reasons. First, Taiwan's unusual pattern of bottom up democratization, starting with electoral competition at the local level and gradually culminating in direct election of the LY and the president, plus the survival of the formerly authoritarian KMT into the democratic era, led to the emergence of two big parties with strong grassroots chapters, a hierarchical structure, and similar party organizations. For the last 30 years, KMT and DPP candidates have run against each other almost everywhere in Taiwan, and they also dominate the majoritarian elections for the president, legislature, and city and county executives.
Second, the China question is by far the most salient issue in Taiwan politics and the only one on which all major political parties take distinct positions. The DPP and KMT are distinguished mostly by their different approaches to managing relations with the PRC; on most other policy issues, the Big Two are as divided internally as they are with each other.
Third, and most important for present purposes, are Taiwan's electoral institutions. The LY is about 65% elected from single-member districts (SMDs) under plurality rule; about 30% from a proportional representation closed-list tier elected via a second party list ballot with a 5% threshold; and about 5% from two reserved indigenous multi-member districts (MMDs) using single-non-transferable vote (SNTV), each with three seats (M=3). The president is directly elected under plurality rule with no runoff, as are all local chief executives. And local councils are still elected using SNTV in relatively high-magnitude MMDs (typically M≥5).
The consequences of this institutional setup are twofold. First, it is relatively easy for small parties to win a few seats in the legislature through the PR tier, and in local councils because of the high district magnitudes (meaning a lower share of the vote is needed to win a seat). The electoral systems for assemblies at both levels are permissive enough to allow the most successful third parties to survive for a while, and they can even occasionally end up in a kingmaker role controlling the balance of power, as the TPP has managed to do in the current legislature. But third parties face a much more daunting challenge if they want to become more than just small niche parties: they also have to win some of the SMD plurality races outright and not simply play a spoiler role in these elections. And to date, no third party in Taiwan has managed to succeed at this challenge.
1. It has high party system institutionalization. Taiwan is unusual among young democracies in having a well-institutionalized party system. Party system institutionalization, or PSI, is the extent to which a party system is stable, predictable, and characterized by established patterns of interaction between political parties. We can measure PSI by looking at electoral volatility across elections, at the level of partisanship in the electorate, and the degree of coherence and organization of the individual political parties. On all these measures, Taiwan looks more like a mature democracy than a young Third Wave one -- it has relatively low electoral volatility, high partisanship, and well-organized and hierarchical political parties that compete with one another almost everywhere.
2. It tends toward two-partism. Taiwan's effective number of parties (ENPs) in the legislature this term is 2.38. Since the new electoral system was used for the first time in 2008, this number has never exceeded 2.5: it was 2.44 in 2020; 2.17 in 2016, 2.23 in 2012, and 1.75 in 2008. The same two parties that finished 1-2 in 1992, the KMT and DPP, finished 2-1 in 2024, and they have been the top two vote and seat-winners in every legislative election in between. They also are almost always the top two finishers in mayoral races around the island. There are not many other Third Wave democracies that have had such a consistent pattern of two-party competition, and even among older democracies, the persistence of the same two parties winning in every election for 30 years is quite unusual.
3. Voting patterns are highly nationalized. Party system nationalization refers to how consistent voting patterns are across a country. It has two components: static nationalization, or how much party vote shares vary across different localities or regions, and dynamic nationalization, or how much vote swings between the parties vary across these same jurisdictions. On the first, static, nationalization measure, although the two major parties have regional strongholds -- the DPP in the south, the KMT in the rural north, east coast, and offshore islands -- they both compete everywhere. There is no regionally-based party akin to the Parti Quebecois in Canada, or the Scottish National Party in the UK, or DMK, Shiv Sena, or Trinamool Congress Party (among many) in India. Nor do Taiwan's regional party strongholds look anywhere near as extreme as South Korea's, where the liberal camp routinely wins 80+% of the vote in the southwest (Jeolla), and the conservative camp wins 80+% in the southeast (Gyeongsang). And on the second, dynamic, nationalization measure, the swing between the DPP and KMT in each election has been remarkably consistent across the island. For instance, in the 2016 election, Tsai Ing-wen improved her vote share over her 2012 campaign in every single jurisdiction in Taiwan, and that increase varied only from about 5% in Penghu to about 12% in Taipei.
Why does Taiwan's party system look this way? Three reasons. First, Taiwan's unusual pattern of bottom up democratization, starting with electoral competition at the local level and gradually culminating in direct election of the LY and the president, plus the survival of the formerly authoritarian KMT into the democratic era, led to the emergence of two big parties with strong grassroots chapters, a hierarchical structure, and similar party organizations. For the last 30 years, KMT and DPP candidates have run against each other almost everywhere in Taiwan, and they also dominate the majoritarian elections for the president, legislature, and city and county executives.
Second, the China question is by far the most salient issue in Taiwan politics and the only one on which all major political parties take distinct positions. The DPP and KMT are distinguished mostly by their different approaches to managing relations with the PRC; on most other policy issues, the Big Two are as divided internally as they are with each other.
Third, and most important for present purposes, are Taiwan's electoral institutions. The LY is about 65% elected from single-member districts (SMDs) under plurality rule; about 30% from a proportional representation closed-list tier elected via a second party list ballot with a 5% threshold; and about 5% from two reserved indigenous multi-member districts (MMDs) using single-non-transferable vote (SNTV), each with three seats (M=3). The president is directly elected under plurality rule with no runoff, as are all local chief executives. And local councils are still elected using SNTV in relatively high-magnitude MMDs (typically M≥5).
The consequences of this institutional setup are twofold. First, it is relatively easy for small parties to win a few seats in the legislature through the PR tier, and in local councils because of the high district magnitudes (meaning a lower share of the vote is needed to win a seat). The electoral systems for assemblies at both levels are permissive enough to allow the most successful third parties to survive for a while, and they can even occasionally end up in a kingmaker role controlling the balance of power, as the TPP has managed to do in the current legislature. But third parties face a much more daunting challenge if they want to become more than just small niche parties: they also have to win some of the SMD plurality races outright and not simply play a spoiler role in these elections. And to date, no third party in Taiwan has managed to succeed at this challenge.
Two Strategies for Third Party Growth in Taiwan
Run on a Second Dimension Issue, or Be More Extreme
Most new parties in Taiwan have responded to this electoral context by adopting one of two strategies. Some of them have chosen to play down or ignore the China question altogether and campaign solely on a second-dimension issue: labor rights, environmental protection, religion, LGBTQ issues, indigenous rights, health care and social welfare, and so on.
A good example of this type of party is the Green Party Taiwan, whose history is detailed in Dafydd Fell's new book. The GPT was founded in the 1990s, and although it has stuck around much longer than most other third parties from that era, it has never succeeded in winning more than a single LY seat over that time period. And yet the Green Party Taiwan is actually one of the most successful examples of parties choosing this path, which is littered with electoral failures. There are hundreds of second-dimension parties that ran on an issue orthogonal to the China question and did not attract sufficient attention or votes to break through in races for the legislature or for local councils. Today, most of them are long gone and forgotten.
The other strategy has been to take a more extreme position than the Big Two on the China question. This path has been more successful, and it is the one that the small parties people have actually heard of have used. For instance, to the pro-independence side of the DPP are the Taiwan Independence Party 建國黨, the Taiwan Solidarity Union 台聯, the New Power Party 時代力量, and the Taiwan State-Building Party 台灣基進黨; to the more pro-unification side of the KMT are the New Party 新黨, the People First Party 親民黨, and the China Unification Promotion Party 中國統一促進黨. (These are what Dafydd Fell, following Paul Lucardie, calls "purifier" parties).
Some of these parties have also leaned into a second-dimension issue on which one of the big parties is divided; for instance, the TSU was more protectionist and socially conservative than the DPP, and as Lev Nachman's new book details, the NPP was more socially liberal and pro-environment. Going further back in Taiwan, in the 1990s the New Party was pro-democratic reform and anti-corruption and sometimes teamed up with the DPP against the KMT on these issues, even though the two held polar opposite positions on the China question.
The Small Party "Valley of Death" in Taiwan Politics
The problem for parties following the second path has been how to grow beyond the extremist fringe. When small parties have attempted to expand beyond the relative safety of MMDs to compete in SMDs, time and time again they have fallen into the "valley of death" (to borrow a term from the venture capital world): they cannot ever break through in enough single member district races to convince voters they are on track to replacing one of the Big Two, and they instead lose support and fade away.
This pattern of failure occurs for two reasons. First, the Big Two don't just stand idly by. When third parties that are more extreme on the China issue run candidates in SMDs, they pose a more serious threat to the big party in their camp than simply competing in the PR list or local council races. Sometimes this party responds by offering a pre-electoral coalition, as the DPP did with the NPP in 2016, and the KMT did with the PFP in 2008; in both of these cases, the small party later got mostly absorbed into the larger party. Other times the big party goes on the offensive and attempts to knock out the smaller challenger, rallying its voters against the small party by portraying it as a traitor to the cause, as the DPP did with the Taiwan Independence Party in the late 1990s. But either way, the small party runs up against an insurmountable wall: they cannot win in the single member districts without attracting votes from some of the big party's supporters, and the big party has both the incentives and the means to prevent defections like this in most cases.
Second, small parties are consistently disadvantaged by strategic voting. In Taiwan, the China factor is so important to so many voters that the incentives for strategic voting are quite strong in the SMD races: for the president and legislature for sure, and even occasionally in the local city and county executives. Voters don't want to waste their votes on a third-party candidate if it will throw the election to the big party they hate, so third party candidates have to convince people they are running not just to play spoiler but to actually win a three-way race against both of the Big Two. And breaking through in these single-member district elections is hard: there's a discontinuity between being perceived as the likely 2nd-place party and being in 3rd or lower. (The jargon-y political science term for this pattern is the M+1 rule: in any district of magnitude M, there will be at most M+1 viable candidates because most voters will ignore or abandon the rest).
Put differently, although Taiwan's electoral institutions consistently provide some space for small parties to compete and win a few seats here and there, they do not provide room for more than two big parties -- at least as long as the party system remains highly institutionalized and voting patterns are nationalized. That means that if you lead a small party and hope to stick around in politics for the long term, you have only two choices: (1) join one of the big parties, or (2) replace one with your own.
Most new parties in Taiwan have responded to this electoral context by adopting one of two strategies. Some of them have chosen to play down or ignore the China question altogether and campaign solely on a second-dimension issue: labor rights, environmental protection, religion, LGBTQ issues, indigenous rights, health care and social welfare, and so on.
A good example of this type of party is the Green Party Taiwan, whose history is detailed in Dafydd Fell's new book. The GPT was founded in the 1990s, and although it has stuck around much longer than most other third parties from that era, it has never succeeded in winning more than a single LY seat over that time period. And yet the Green Party Taiwan is actually one of the most successful examples of parties choosing this path, which is littered with electoral failures. There are hundreds of second-dimension parties that ran on an issue orthogonal to the China question and did not attract sufficient attention or votes to break through in races for the legislature or for local councils. Today, most of them are long gone and forgotten.
The other strategy has been to take a more extreme position than the Big Two on the China question. This path has been more successful, and it is the one that the small parties people have actually heard of have used. For instance, to the pro-independence side of the DPP are the Taiwan Independence Party 建國黨, the Taiwan Solidarity Union 台聯, the New Power Party 時代力量, and the Taiwan State-Building Party 台灣基進黨; to the more pro-unification side of the KMT are the New Party 新黨, the People First Party 親民黨, and the China Unification Promotion Party 中國統一促進黨. (These are what Dafydd Fell, following Paul Lucardie, calls "purifier" parties).
Some of these parties have also leaned into a second-dimension issue on which one of the big parties is divided; for instance, the TSU was more protectionist and socially conservative than the DPP, and as Lev Nachman's new book details, the NPP was more socially liberal and pro-environment. Going further back in Taiwan, in the 1990s the New Party was pro-democratic reform and anti-corruption and sometimes teamed up with the DPP against the KMT on these issues, even though the two held polar opposite positions on the China question.
The Small Party "Valley of Death" in Taiwan Politics
The problem for parties following the second path has been how to grow beyond the extremist fringe. When small parties have attempted to expand beyond the relative safety of MMDs to compete in SMDs, time and time again they have fallen into the "valley of death" (to borrow a term from the venture capital world): they cannot ever break through in enough single member district races to convince voters they are on track to replacing one of the Big Two, and they instead lose support and fade away.
This pattern of failure occurs for two reasons. First, the Big Two don't just stand idly by. When third parties that are more extreme on the China issue run candidates in SMDs, they pose a more serious threat to the big party in their camp than simply competing in the PR list or local council races. Sometimes this party responds by offering a pre-electoral coalition, as the DPP did with the NPP in 2016, and the KMT did with the PFP in 2008; in both of these cases, the small party later got mostly absorbed into the larger party. Other times the big party goes on the offensive and attempts to knock out the smaller challenger, rallying its voters against the small party by portraying it as a traitor to the cause, as the DPP did with the Taiwan Independence Party in the late 1990s. But either way, the small party runs up against an insurmountable wall: they cannot win in the single member districts without attracting votes from some of the big party's supporters, and the big party has both the incentives and the means to prevent defections like this in most cases.
Second, small parties are consistently disadvantaged by strategic voting. In Taiwan, the China factor is so important to so many voters that the incentives for strategic voting are quite strong in the SMD races: for the president and legislature for sure, and even occasionally in the local city and county executives. Voters don't want to waste their votes on a third-party candidate if it will throw the election to the big party they hate, so third party candidates have to convince people they are running not just to play spoiler but to actually win a three-way race against both of the Big Two. And breaking through in these single-member district elections is hard: there's a discontinuity between being perceived as the likely 2nd-place party and being in 3rd or lower. (The jargon-y political science term for this pattern is the M+1 rule: in any district of magnitude M, there will be at most M+1 viable candidates because most voters will ignore or abandon the rest).
Put differently, although Taiwan's electoral institutions consistently provide some space for small parties to compete and win a few seats here and there, they do not provide room for more than two big parties -- at least as long as the party system remains highly institutionalized and voting patterns are nationalized. That means that if you lead a small party and hope to stick around in politics for the long term, you have only two choices: (1) join one of the big parties, or (2) replace one with your own.
The TPP Is Trying Something Different
TPP chairman Huang Kuo-chang and KMT chairman Eric Chu at the self-styled "Bring Democracy Back to Taiwan" summit on April 22, 2025.
Now, with this context in mind, consider again the position of the Taiwan People's Party. The TPP is yet another third party trying to grow into a serious challenger to the Big Two. But since Ko Wen-je founded it in 2019, it has pursued a different strategy from other third parties: it positioned itself as centrist on the China issue, to the point where it adopted aquamarine (neither blue nor green) as its party color. And in addition to playing to the middle on China, it also leaned heavily on Ko's personal appeal to attract votes.
By historical standards, this strategy worked. In the 2024 elections the party garnered over 20% of the party list vote, eight seats in the LY, and a kingmaker position in the LY for four years. No other party since 2008 has pulled that off. It's an impressive achievement!
And yet, it's not enough. All of the LY seats the TPP holds are via the party list; it didn't win a single district race. For a third-party candidate, Ko Wen-je did remarkably well in the presidential election -- but he still came in third. And now that he is detained indefinitely while he faces corruption charges, the TPP cannot count on Ko to win votes for them in the future and has to find some other way to appeal to the electorate. The party also no longer holds any local executive offices -- in 2022, Ko's preferred successor in Taipei, Huang Shan-shan, came in third behind the KMT's Chiang Wan-an and the DPP's Chen Shih-chung, and the party's one success story that year, Kao Hung-an's upset victory in the mayor's race in Hsinchu City, has effectively been reversed by Kao's subsequent suspension for padding her salary through reimbursements to non-existent staff while she was a legislator; she is likely to be recalled as mayor later this month.
So, despite holding a prime position in the LY right now, the TPP is also facing existential challenges. Can it reinvent itself as something more than the Ko-P party, now that Ko Wen-je is indefinitely sidelined? And if it wants not only to survive but also to thrive, it needs to find a way to displace one of the Big Two in some of the SMD seats. And what's the best strategy for that? Does it remain a free agent, swinging between green and blue depending on the issue, and get squeezed out in the next election (a la James Soong and the PFP)? Does it enter a pre-electoral coalition with one or the other, at the risk of absorption (like the NPP in 2016)? Or is there a third option?
I think they've decided on a more ambitious strategy: replacing the KMT.
For more on that strategy, see Part 3.
By historical standards, this strategy worked. In the 2024 elections the party garnered over 20% of the party list vote, eight seats in the LY, and a kingmaker position in the LY for four years. No other party since 2008 has pulled that off. It's an impressive achievement!
And yet, it's not enough. All of the LY seats the TPP holds are via the party list; it didn't win a single district race. For a third-party candidate, Ko Wen-je did remarkably well in the presidential election -- but he still came in third. And now that he is detained indefinitely while he faces corruption charges, the TPP cannot count on Ko to win votes for them in the future and has to find some other way to appeal to the electorate. The party also no longer holds any local executive offices -- in 2022, Ko's preferred successor in Taipei, Huang Shan-shan, came in third behind the KMT's Chiang Wan-an and the DPP's Chen Shih-chung, and the party's one success story that year, Kao Hung-an's upset victory in the mayor's race in Hsinchu City, has effectively been reversed by Kao's subsequent suspension for padding her salary through reimbursements to non-existent staff while she was a legislator; she is likely to be recalled as mayor later this month.
So, despite holding a prime position in the LY right now, the TPP is also facing existential challenges. Can it reinvent itself as something more than the Ko-P party, now that Ko Wen-je is indefinitely sidelined? And if it wants not only to survive but also to thrive, it needs to find a way to displace one of the Big Two in some of the SMD seats. And what's the best strategy for that? Does it remain a free agent, swinging between green and blue depending on the issue, and get squeezed out in the next election (a la James Soong and the PFP)? Does it enter a pre-electoral coalition with one or the other, at the risk of absorption (like the NPP in 2016)? Or is there a third option?
I think they've decided on a more ambitious strategy: replacing the KMT.
For more on that strategy, see Part 3.
- Published on
This post got so long I broke it into [two] --> [three] --> FOUR pieces. Part 1 is below. Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here, and Part 4 is here.
For the past 18 months, the biggest puzzle in Taiwan politics has been the curious behavior of the Taiwan People's Party (TPP). In the 2024 elections, the TPP did very well for a third party, winning 22 percent of the party list vote and eight seats -- enough to break through the DPP-KMT duopoly to deny either of the two major parties a majority for the first time since the Chen Shui-bian era. That made it the kingmaker in the Legislative Yuan and gave it significant bargaining power over the other two parties in this term -- if they were able to exploit it.
The puzzle is that the TPP does not appear to have maximized its leverage in the current legislature. The party's leaders turned down opportunities to grab the speaker or deputy speaker positions or to negotiate for cabinet positions in a Lai government, and over the last year they have instead prioritized opposition to the DPP administration rather than conditional cooperation with the ruling party. More surprising still, they have publicly aligned themselves with the KMT on many of that party's most controversial policy initiatives -- even when those policies are broadly unpopular.
This transformation of the TPP in the public eye from a centrist swing party to a "pan-blue subsidiary" has generated a widespread sense of angst and betrayal among pan-green commentators, who have accused the TPP of "subordinat[ing] itself blindly" and "march[ing] in lockstep with the KMT," and even tacitly cooperating with the CCP to oppose the DPP and the Lai administration. The TPP's public image has shifted so dramatically that many observers of Taiwan politics now simply assert that the legislature is "KMT-controlled."
The problem with this assertion is that it's wrong. The TPP legislative caucus is not actually marching in lockstep with the KMT on every issue, as I'll argue in what follows. On the contrary, it holds preferences that are quite distinct from the KMT, it has acted as a significant check on that party's legislative caucus, and its public cooperation with the KMT against the ruling DPP will be temporary and limited, rather than comprehensive and indefinite. But for their own reasons, neither the KMT nor the TPP want to advertise this fact. For the moment, they both would rather have everyone believe they are a unified pan-blue team cooperating to stop DPP overreach.
No other explanation is consistent with the political outcomes of the last 18 months.
The puzzle is that the TPP does not appear to have maximized its leverage in the current legislature. The party's leaders turned down opportunities to grab the speaker or deputy speaker positions or to negotiate for cabinet positions in a Lai government, and over the last year they have instead prioritized opposition to the DPP administration rather than conditional cooperation with the ruling party. More surprising still, they have publicly aligned themselves with the KMT on many of that party's most controversial policy initiatives -- even when those policies are broadly unpopular.
This transformation of the TPP in the public eye from a centrist swing party to a "pan-blue subsidiary" has generated a widespread sense of angst and betrayal among pan-green commentators, who have accused the TPP of "subordinat[ing] itself blindly" and "march[ing] in lockstep with the KMT," and even tacitly cooperating with the CCP to oppose the DPP and the Lai administration. The TPP's public image has shifted so dramatically that many observers of Taiwan politics now simply assert that the legislature is "KMT-controlled."
The problem with this assertion is that it's wrong. The TPP legislative caucus is not actually marching in lockstep with the KMT on every issue, as I'll argue in what follows. On the contrary, it holds preferences that are quite distinct from the KMT, it has acted as a significant check on that party's legislative caucus, and its public cooperation with the KMT against the ruling DPP will be temporary and limited, rather than comprehensive and indefinite. But for their own reasons, neither the KMT nor the TPP want to advertise this fact. For the moment, they both would rather have everyone believe they are a unified pan-blue team cooperating to stop DPP overreach.
No other explanation is consistent with the political outcomes of the last 18 months.
- Published on
Counting ballots, January 11, 2020.
For the rest of this preview, see: Part I. Part II. Part III.
Summing up, here's the ratings as of August 16:
By way of conclusion, here are five observations on the 2022 local elections three months out:
1. The KMT is down but not out. There is now a frequent refrain among outside observers that the KMT is just hopelessly disorganized and dysfunctional and cannot mount a serious challenge to the DPP anymore, until and unless it changes its position on cross-Strait relations. Maybe. But going through race by race here suggests the party's candidates are still very competitive in local elections. By my own count, I have the KMT nominee favored right now to win in 16 of 22 localities -- that's more than they control today.
Perhaps I'm being too generous to the blue camp here -- and after adding the numbers up I'm feeling a wee bit uncomfortable with how lopsided they are -- but one can at least make a reasonable case that the KMT will hold a majority of local executives after these elections, IF (big if) the national environment doesn't turn against it. Despite a rough few years, the party still has significant residual strength at the local level, and reports of its impending demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Summing up, here's the ratings as of August 16:
- Safe KMT (2): Kinmen, Lienchiang
- Likely KMT (6): New Taipei, Hsinchu County, Nantou, Chiayi City, Hualien, Taitung
- Leans KMT (8): Taipei, Taichung, Keelung, Hsinchu City, Miaoli, Changhua, Yunlin, Penghu
- Toss-up (1): Taoyuan
- Leans DPP (1): Yilan
- Likely DPP (1): Pingtung
- Safe DPP (3): Tainan, Kaohsiung, Chiayi County
By way of conclusion, here are five observations on the 2022 local elections three months out:
1. The KMT is down but not out. There is now a frequent refrain among outside observers that the KMT is just hopelessly disorganized and dysfunctional and cannot mount a serious challenge to the DPP anymore, until and unless it changes its position on cross-Strait relations. Maybe. But going through race by race here suggests the party's candidates are still very competitive in local elections. By my own count, I have the KMT nominee favored right now to win in 16 of 22 localities -- that's more than they control today.
Perhaps I'm being too generous to the blue camp here -- and after adding the numbers up I'm feeling a wee bit uncomfortable with how lopsided they are -- but one can at least make a reasonable case that the KMT will hold a majority of local executives after these elections, IF (big if) the national environment doesn't turn against it. Despite a rough few years, the party still has significant residual strength at the local level, and reports of its impending demise have been greatly exaggerated.
The latest data from NCCU ESC shows KMT partisans at a record low.
2. HOWEVA, there is a lot of downside risk for the KMT. Since 2014, all local elections in Taiwan have been held concurrently. As a result, outcomes across races have been more correlated than they used to be. The last two election cycles have produced big swings against the party in power: in 2014, President Ma Ying-jeou's approval ratings were under 20 percent, and the DPP flipped seven counties and cities as part of an anti-KMT wave election. In 2018, Tsai's ratings were under 30 percent, and the KMT swept all the competitive races except for Taipei, where Mayor Ko barely hung on.
In this election cycle, the KMT is playing defense: they hold 14 of the 22 local posts and will do well just to keep that number. More than six years into her presidency, Tsai Ing-wen has defied the second-term curse and her approval ratings have been positive for most of the last two years. The KMT's party ID numbers have fallen far behind the DPP (the latest NCCU/ESC polls have DPP identifiers at 31% of respondents, and the KMT at a record-low 14%.) And US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in early August has triggered an extended round of military exercises and bellicose rhetoric from Beijing that has put the KMT on the defensive again. As the "China-friendly" party in Taiwan, the KMT has traditionally suffered politically when the salience of the threat from the PRC increases. (This is arguably a big part of the reason Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected in 2020.)
It's possible that a natural disaster, a worsening COVID situation, a new government scandal or two, or just a general weariness with the DPP could drag down the central government's popularity over the next three months. But if Beijing's military exercises and pressure campaign on Taiwanese agricultural products continue, they are likely to help the DPP and hurt the KMT. In addition, the CCP's 20th Party Congress will likely happen sometime in November [update 8.30: it will begin earlier, on Oct 16], where expectations are that Xi Jinping will be confirmed for a third term as General Party Secretary. Not since 1992 has this meeting been held around the same time as a major Taiwanese election (the 14th Party Congress was 12-18 October, and the LY election was 19 December), and, depending on what is said about Taiwan there, it has the potential to trigger another public opinion backlash in Taiwan against the PRC, much like Xi Jinping's January 2, 2019 speech to "Taiwan compatriots" led to a rebound in Tsai Ing-wen's approval ratings.
So, despite having a strong slate of candidates for local office, the KMT could easily lose most of the competitive races if the salience of cross-Strait relations remains high through the fall.
In this election cycle, the KMT is playing defense: they hold 14 of the 22 local posts and will do well just to keep that number. More than six years into her presidency, Tsai Ing-wen has defied the second-term curse and her approval ratings have been positive for most of the last two years. The KMT's party ID numbers have fallen far behind the DPP (the latest NCCU/ESC polls have DPP identifiers at 31% of respondents, and the KMT at a record-low 14%.) And US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in early August has triggered an extended round of military exercises and bellicose rhetoric from Beijing that has put the KMT on the defensive again. As the "China-friendly" party in Taiwan, the KMT has traditionally suffered politically when the salience of the threat from the PRC increases. (This is arguably a big part of the reason Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected in 2020.)
It's possible that a natural disaster, a worsening COVID situation, a new government scandal or two, or just a general weariness with the DPP could drag down the central government's popularity over the next three months. But if Beijing's military exercises and pressure campaign on Taiwanese agricultural products continue, they are likely to help the DPP and hurt the KMT. In addition, the CCP's 20th Party Congress will likely happen sometime in November [update 8.30: it will begin earlier, on Oct 16], where expectations are that Xi Jinping will be confirmed for a third term as General Party Secretary. Not since 1992 has this meeting been held around the same time as a major Taiwanese election (the 14th Party Congress was 12-18 October, and the LY election was 19 December), and, depending on what is said about Taiwan there, it has the potential to trigger another public opinion backlash in Taiwan against the PRC, much like Xi Jinping's January 2, 2019 speech to "Taiwan compatriots" led to a rebound in Tsai Ing-wen's approval ratings.
So, despite having a strong slate of candidates for local office, the KMT could easily lose most of the competitive races if the salience of cross-Strait relations remains high through the fall.
3. Nominations are half the battle. Both major parties moved away from the polling primaries method they've used in the past to select nominees, and instead empowered the chair to "negotiate" or hand-pick nominees in most races. The DPP has done this a lot during the Tsai Ing-wen era; one of her political gifts is effectively managing the intra-party fights over offices and spoils in a way that keeps everyone onside. She's mostly succeeded at that again here, although the party's slate of nominees as a whole seems rather underwhelming to me. Despite their recent success at the national level, the DPP still doesn't have a deep bench of local politicians who have built up grass-roots networks and can play the factional game as well as the KMT. And in places like Chiayi, Yunlin, or Changhua, winning that game can still be decisive.
On the KMT side, Eric Chu had a couple well-publicized nomination fiascos in Taoyuan and Miaoli. But in most of the other races, the party has recruited well. Chu's task has been made easier by having incumbents to renominate in many races, which has helped head off the kind of factional squabbling that has bedeviled the party in the past. It's especially notable that with popular mayors running again in Chiayi City, Changhua, and Yunlin, the KMT is well-positioned to hold on in several jurisdictions that have become reliably "green" in national elections.
Both major parties still face threats in several races from spoiler candidates from the minor parties, the NPP and TPP. The NPP is now firmly in the pan-green camp, and the presence of its nominees will almost certainly hurt the DPP more, as they did in the 2020 legislative elections. The TPP is new to local politics this cycle, and it is trying to position itself as more centrist than the KMT. It could erode support for or even eclipse the KMT, as some recent public polling has shown it might; but given the long track record of third party candidates in Taiwan underperforming in elections relative to early polls, I'll believe it only when I see it.
On the KMT side, Eric Chu had a couple well-publicized nomination fiascos in Taoyuan and Miaoli. But in most of the other races, the party has recruited well. Chu's task has been made easier by having incumbents to renominate in many races, which has helped head off the kind of factional squabbling that has bedeviled the party in the past. It's especially notable that with popular mayors running again in Chiayi City, Changhua, and Yunlin, the KMT is well-positioned to hold on in several jurisdictions that have become reliably "green" in national elections.
Both major parties still face threats in several races from spoiler candidates from the minor parties, the NPP and TPP. The NPP is now firmly in the pan-green camp, and the presence of its nominees will almost certainly hurt the DPP more, as they did in the 2020 legislative elections. The TPP is new to local politics this cycle, and it is trying to position itself as more centrist than the KMT. It could erode support for or even eclipse the KMT, as some recent public polling has shown it might; but given the long track record of third party candidates in Taiwan underperforming in elections relative to early polls, I'll believe it only when I see it.
4. Does the amendment to lower the voting age have a chance? Unlike in 2018, there’s not going to be referendums held alongside the local elections. There will, however, be a vote on a constitutional amendment to lower the voting age, from 20 to 18 years old. There is no open partisan opposition to the amendment, which passed the legislature 109-0 on March 25. But it does require the support of half of all eligible voters to take effect -- not just half of those voting. With an electorate of 19.3 million, that means 9.65 million yes votes are required for approval. So it will need high turnout in the local elections, and even so it is far from certain the proposal will get enough support to pass the threshold. This is the first time the voters will decide on a constitutional amendment since the new procedure was adopted in 2005.
5. Year of the Woman? I was surprised at just how well-represented women are in both parties this cycle. Either the KMT or DPP has nominated a woman in 2 of 6 special municipalities, and 10 of 16 other races. In 3 races (Nantou, Changhua, and Hualien), both candidates are women. Taiwan rightly gets a lot of attention for having a woman as president and increasing representation in the legislature (41% in 2020, up from 38% in 2016). But the numbers at the local level are also striking: one can easily imagine a result in 2022 where women end up leading a majority of Taiwan's localities, in Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung, Yilan, Hsinchu City, Nantou, Changhua, Chiayi City, Yunlin, Pingtung, Hualien, and Taitung.
That’s all the more impressive because the cabinet still looks like this:
That’s all the more impressive because the cabinet still looks like this:
And the top of Taiwanese academia looks like this:
And the business world still looks like this:
For more on how women came to be so prominent in Taiwanese elections, check out this explanation from Huang Chang-ling about Taiwan's gender quotas and their long-term effects on women's advancement in politics. Nathan Batto also has a great paper on this topic.
- Published on
This is Part II of the 2022 local elections overview. For coverage of special municipalities, see Part I. For the South, East, and Offshore Islands, see Part III. For concluding thoughts, see Part IV.
Keelung City - 基隆市
KMT: Nominated former legislator Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) on May 26.
DPP: Nominated legislator Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應) on July 22.
Others: The NPP has nominated a candidate for mayor here, city councilor Chen Wei-chung (陳薇仲). Independent candidate Huang Hsi-hsien (黃希賢) left the KMT in 2021. One other political novice registered -- a poet named Tseng Kuo-min (曾國民).
T-PVI: B+7
Notes:
Result: KMT gain. Hsieh Kuo-liang wins, 52.9-39.0%.
DPP: Nominated legislator Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應) on July 22.
Others: The NPP has nominated a candidate for mayor here, city councilor Chen Wei-chung (陳薇仲). Independent candidate Huang Hsi-hsien (黃希賢) left the KMT in 2021. One other political novice registered -- a poet named Tseng Kuo-min (曾國民).
T-PVI: B+7
Notes:
- This is one of the more interesting races in this cycle. Both major party candidates have held the Keelung legislative seat: Hsieh from 2008-2016, and Tsai from 2016-present.
- Keelung used to be reliably blue until 2016, when Tsai won the LY seat here in a major upset. He beat former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin, who parachuted in (and shoved aside Hsieh) because he thought it would be a relatively easy seat to win. Oops.
- Keelung has had a DPP mayor for the last eight years, but it still leans blue, and the presence of an NPP candidate will probably hurt Tsai more.
- Conversely, the KMT has suffered some really damaging intra-party splits here in the recent past, and Huang could steal some votes from Hsieh. Huang was a leading supporter of Han Kuo-yu in the 2020 presidential campaign, but has more recently also welcomed support from other parties and sought to position himself as part of a "Third Force" in Keelung.
- Update 9.26: Popular incumbent DPP mayor Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) is taking a prominent role in Tsai Shih-ying's campaign to be his successor.
- 2022.10.5-7: Hey, somebody finally polled Keelung! And it's TISR! Excellent. There's a lot to learn from this one. Headline number is Hsieh narrowly leading Tsai, 31-28%. The NPP's Chen Wei-chung is pulling 5%, with former KMT member Huang Hsi-hsien getting only 1%. Hsieh is getting about 80% of KMT supporters, and Huang only 3%. Among DPP partisans, Tsai is getting only 71%, Hsieh has 8% (!), and the NPP's Chen has 4%. Both camps are split here, but Hsieh appears to be doing better holding on to pan-blue voters than Tsai is pan-green. That might make the difference. I'm surprised the KMT renegade candidate Huang isn't registering any support in this poll.
Result: KMT gain. Hsieh Kuo-liang wins, 52.9-39.0%.
Yilan County - 宜蘭縣
KMT: Renominated incumbent county executive Lin Zi-miao (林姿妙).
DPP: Nominated Yilan City mayor Chiang Tsung-yuan (江聰淵).
Others: The TPP has nominated party caucus director Chen Wan-hui (陳琬惠) here. Update 9.2: Three others.
T-PVI: G+6
Notes:
Update 10.26: Leans KMT. Recent polling indicates Lin is holding on despite the corruption charges, and Chiang hasn't made much progress here. I have no local knowledge about what is going on in this race, but if Chiang was going to consolidate the green camp behind him it should have happened by now. Two polls from very different outlets using different methods both find him stuck in the low 30s -- in Yilan! Lin Zi-miao is enjoying the advantages of incumbency, I guess? Rating change to Leans KMT.
Result: KMT hold. Lin Zi-miao wins 50.8-41.1%.
DPP: Nominated Yilan City mayor Chiang Tsung-yuan (江聰淵).
Others: The TPP has nominated party caucus director Chen Wan-hui (陳琬惠) here. Update 9.2: Three others.
T-PVI: G+6
Notes:
- Yilan has traditionally been a DPP stronghold, and winning this office launched the political careers of prominent DPP leaders Chen Ding-nan (Minister of Justice during the Chen Shui-bian era) and You Si-kun (the current Speaker of the Legislative Yuan). Before Lin, the only KMT member to win here in the democratic era was Lu Kuo-hua (呂國華) in 2005. But the DPP entered the 2018 campaign divided: the party's nominee, Chen Ou-po (陳歐珀), was picked over the acting DPP magistrate, Chen Chin-te (陳金德), who himself was at odds with his DPP predecessor Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢), who had left to lead the Council of Agriculture. Chen Ou-pu never managed to unify the DPP base behind his candidacy, and Lin Zi-miao was the beneficiary.
- In January 2022, prosecutors announced that Lin was under investigation for bribe-taking and other political corruption dating to her time as Luodong Township mayor. The KMT tried to paint these accusations as politically motivated, and Lin remains in the race.
- Chiang Tsung-yuan is the two-term mayor of Yilan City, the county's most populous jurisdiction.
- Chen was ranked 9th on the TPP's party list in 2020, not high enough to enter the legislature.
- Update 8.24: Lin Zi-miao, her daughter, 10 other county officials, and five other people have been formally indicted by Yilan County prosecutor's office for corruption, forgery, and money laundering. Lin is accused of accepting illegal payments when she was head of Luodong Township, and later as Yilan mayor helping to cover up illegal conversion of agricultural land to urban use. She says the charges are politically motivated and remains in the race.
- 2022.10.11-15: RWNews online poll is rather surprising, given Lin's corruption charges: she is still comfortably ahead of Chiang, 53-31%, with the TPP's Chen at 5.5%. Yeesh. What a bad result for the DPP here.
- 2022.10.19-21: Liberty Times with an in-house poll of this race, which finds a much closer race: Lin in the lead with 37% to Chiang's 30%, with the TPP's Chen at 4%. But Lin is still ahead even in this poll from an outfit with a strong green house effect. Not looking great for the DPP here a month out.
Update 10.26: Leans KMT. Recent polling indicates Lin is holding on despite the corruption charges, and Chiang hasn't made much progress here. I have no local knowledge about what is going on in this race, but if Chiang was going to consolidate the green camp behind him it should have happened by now. Two polls from very different outlets using different methods both find him stuck in the low 30s -- in Yilan! Lin Zi-miao is enjoying the advantages of incumbency, I guess? Rating change to Leans KMT.
Result: KMT hold. Lin Zi-miao wins 50.8-41.1%.
Hsinchu City - 新竹市
KMT: Nominated 6-term city councilor Lin Geng-ren (林耕仁) on June 22.
DPP: Nominated deputy mayor Shen Hui-hung (沈慧虹), also on June 22.
Others: The TPP has nominated party-list legislator Kao Hung-an 高虹安. The NPP may also field a candidate here. Update 9.2: In the end, the NPP did not endorse a candidate; 3 independents registered.
T-PVI: B+3
Notes:
Update 10.26: Toss-Up. Kao is clearly competitive here, and her candidacy seems to be pulling more support from the blue than green camp. Still a month to go, but this race could break toward any of the three main candidates now. It's certainly not looking great for Lin and the KMT...Rating change to Toss-Up.
Result: TPP gain. Kao Hung-an wins 45.0-35.7%.
DPP: Nominated deputy mayor Shen Hui-hung (沈慧虹), also on June 22.
Others: The TPP has nominated party-list legislator Kao Hung-an 高虹安. The NPP may also field a candidate here. Update 9.2: In the end, the NPP did not endorse a candidate; 3 independents registered.
T-PVI: B+3
Notes:
- Incumbent mayor Lin Chih-chien was term-limited out. He resigned as mayor to take up the DPP's nomination for Taoyuan, then had to withdraw from that race on August 12.
- Shen is a career civil servant who joined the DPP only in June. She spent her career in the Taipei city government, working on transportation issues under both DPP (Chen Shui-bian) and KMT (Ma Ying-jeou and Hau Lung-bin) mayors. Lin Chih-chien appointed her head of the transportation department in Hsinchu in 2014, and deputy mayor in 2016.
- Both the NPP and TPP could play spoiler roles here; many Hsinchu voters have been willing to support third-party candidates in recent years. In 2016, the NPP fielded a candidate against the DPP's caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) in violation of its pre-electoral pact (Ker squeezed out a win anyway), and in 2020, the KMT candidate Cheng Cheng-ling (鄭正鈴) won here with only 37% of the vote when the DPP and NPP candidates split the rest.
- The TPP's Kao is a party-list legislator without much of a public profile before 2020, but she's got a background that matches Hsinchu's high-tech aspirations: a PhD in mechanical engineering from an American university, and several years experience working at Foxconn (鴻海) as an aide to Terry Gou. This will be a test of whether the TPP can cultivate candidates who will emerge out of the shadow of Ko Wen-je and be competitive in local races.
- Update 10.26. The plagiarism accusations flying around in what seems like every race in Taiwan have now been hurled at both Kao and Lin as well. Kao seems more vulnerable because her campaign appeal is based in part on having an engineering PhD from an American university; the criticism is that she used materials from previous papers and a report she was lead author on in her dissertation without proper attribution. Now the institute she worked for, the government-funded Institute for Information Industry, is suing her for improperly using their copyrighted materials in her dissertation. To my eyes this might be sloppy but it's not in the same category as copying someone else's work to get an MA degree, and it looks like a partisan hit job.
- 2022.7.15-22: An early TVBS poll here finds a very close three-way race, with Lin at 27%, Kao at 26% (!), and Shen at 23%. That suggests Kao is a viable candidate here, and strategic voting might actually lead some green-leaning voters to abandon the DPP's Shen instead.
- 2022.10.4-8: RWNews online poll shows a rather shocking turn here: Kao leads the race with 37%, with Shen at 30%, and Lin at 25%.
- 2022.10.19-24: ETToday poll reports similars results as RWNews: Kao leads the race with 38%, to Shen's 32% and Lin way in back with 18%. If these latest polls are at all accurate, strategic voting appears more likely to hurt Lin than Shen. At the least it's clear Kao has a real shot to win, which is probably why the plagiarism attacks on her are so vicious.
- 2022.10.21-26: TVBS polls Hsinchu again, finds Kao Hung-an in the lead with 34% to Shen Hui-hung's 27% and Lin Geng-ren at 21%. If even TVBS with its strong blue house effect finds the KMT nominee Lin in 3rd place, then he's really in trouble. But it looks like Kao rather than Shen is the primary beneficiary. I tend to be skeptical of polls that show third-party candidates doing this well, since voters have a tendency to drift back toward their partisan leanings as Election Day approaches. We'll see if Kao can maintain her lead for the next month.
Update 10.26: Toss-Up. Kao is clearly competitive here, and her candidacy seems to be pulling more support from the blue than green camp. Still a month to go, but this race could break toward any of the three main candidates now. It's certainly not looking great for Lin and the KMT...Rating change to Toss-Up.
Result: TPP gain. Kao Hung-an wins 45.0-35.7%.
Hsinchu County - 新竹縣
KMT: Renominated incumbent Yang Wen-ke (楊文科).
DPP: Nominated Chou Chiang-chieh (周江杰) on August 8.
Others: Chubei mayor Ho Kan-ming (何淦銘) declared his own candidacy in June and tried without success to convince the DPP to back him. Update 9.23: Ho pulled out of the race at the last moment; 3 other independents registered.
T-PVI: B+12
Notes:
Update 9.23: Safe KMT. With Ho not running and no other prominent pan-blue candidates registering, this race is now effectively a one-on-one contest between a KMT incumbent facing a young, untested DPP nominee in a deep blue county. There's a plausible scenario in which Yang could have lost this election, but this is not it. Rating change to Safe KMT.
Result: KMT hold. Yang Ke-wen wins 63.4-32.4%.
DPP: Nominated Chou Chiang-chieh (周江杰) on August 8.
Others: Chubei mayor Ho Kan-ming (何淦銘) declared his own candidacy in June and tried without success to convince the DPP to back him. Update 9.23: Ho pulled out of the race at the last moment; 3 other independents registered.
T-PVI: B+12
Notes:
- Yang held off a stiff challenge here in 2018 from another pan-blue candidate, Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩) of the Minkuotang (民國黨). Despite the pan-blue split, the DPP couldn't steal this one; Yang won 38% of the vote to Hsu's 32% and DPP candidate Cheng Chao-fang's (鄭朝方) 28%.
- Chou was a county councilor for one term (2014-17) as a Taiwan Green Party member, then was recruited into the DPP to lead the party's Hakka Affairs Department. His recent career illustrates the DPP's willingness to co-opt energetic "third force" activists into the party; other examples include Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) and Fan Yun (范雲).
- Ho is an independent who has cooperated with the DPP in the past, winning the Chubei mayor's race twice with backing from the party. This time around, the DPP's central nomination committee made a decision here to nominate one of their own rather than support an independent challenge to Yang; that decision probably assures Yang of victory.
- Update 9.23. I missed earlier that Ho announced he would not run on the day of the Sept 2 registration deadline. He also declined to endorse the DPP candidate Chou here, and instead pledged to work to elect Kuo Han-chang (郭漢章) as his successor in Chubei. That makes the county race close to a straight-up green-blue two-way contest now. None of the other three candidates have much of a public profile.
- 2022.10.4-8: RWNews online poll finds Yang leading Chou, 45-30%. Some weakness in that number for Yang (an incumbent under 50% is usually a warning sign), but he's still way ahead.
Update 9.23: Safe KMT. With Ho not running and no other prominent pan-blue candidates registering, this race is now effectively a one-on-one contest between a KMT incumbent facing a young, untested DPP nominee in a deep blue county. There's a plausible scenario in which Yang could have lost this election, but this is not it. Rating change to Safe KMT.
Result: KMT hold. Yang Ke-wen wins 63.4-32.4%.
Miaoli County - 苗栗縣
KMT: Initially announced Legislator Hsu Chih-jung (徐志榮) as the nominee on May 14. But Hsu didn't want to run, and on June 29 he was replaced by Hsieh Fu-hung (謝福弘).
DPP: Nominated Hsu Ting-chen (徐定禎) on April 27.
Others: KMT member Chung Tung-chin (鐘東錦) declared he would defy the party leadership and run as an independent shortly after Hsieh's nomination was announced. The NPP has also nominated a candidate here, Song Kuo-ting (宋國鼎). One other independent candidate.
T-PVI: B+11
Notes:
Update 10.26: Toss-up. The renegade candidate Chung still seems to be a serious threat to win this. In the absence of good polling data and with all four candidates apparently still viable, rating change to Toss-Up.
Result: Independent (KMT renegade) gain. Chung wins 42.7%-31.2%.
DPP: Nominated Hsu Ting-chen (徐定禎) on April 27.
Others: KMT member Chung Tung-chin (鐘東錦) declared he would defy the party leadership and run as an independent shortly after Hsieh's nomination was announced. The NPP has also nominated a candidate here, Song Kuo-ting (宋國鼎). One other independent candidate.
T-PVI: B+11
Notes:
- Hsieh's entire career has been in the Irrigation Association of Miaoli County. He lost his position at the head of that organization after the DPP passed a bill in 2020 turning all association positions into appointed positions rather than elected ones.
- Chung Tung-chin is the Miaoli County Council Speaker, and he has a colorful past.
- The DPP's nominee Hsu is the former mayor of Toufen, a moderate-sized town.
- The NPP tried to get the DPP to forego nominating a candidate here and instead to back their own member, Song Kuo-ting, the party's only county councilor. The DPP refused, and now there's a four-way race.
- Update 9.8. The KMT has now expelled Chung Tung-chin from the party. Hsieh Fu-hung is gamely trying to rally the KMT base back behind his candidacy.
- 2022.7.5-9: A very early online poll from RWNews found Chung leading the pack, with 38% to the DPP's Hsu with 19%, the NPP's Song with 16%, and Hsieh in a weak 4th place with 12%.
- 2022.10.26: For a race that's so colorful it's frustrating there still do not seem to be any good recent polls of Miaoli. So I'm going to mention the results of a poll from something called the Asia Pacific Elite Exchange Association (?) here, which got a writeup in Newtalk news. They show a four way race, with KMT renegade Chung at 22%, the DPP's nominee Hsu at 21%, the NPP's Song at 11.5%, and the KMT nominee Hsieh all the way down at 7%. That seems improbably low for a KMT candidate in Miaoli. But, combined with lots of political reporting suggesting Hsieh is a really weak candidate, that's enough to change this to a toss-up.
Update 10.26: Toss-up. The renegade candidate Chung still seems to be a serious threat to win this. In the absence of good polling data and with all four candidates apparently still viable, rating change to Toss-Up.
Result: Independent (KMT renegade) gain. Chung wins 42.7%-31.2%.
Nantou County - 南投縣
KMT: Nominated legislator Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華) on May 26. (Not to be confused with Taipei City DPP councilor Hsu Shu-hua (also written 許淑華 in Chinese.))
DPP: Nominated former party-list legislator Frida Tsai (蔡培慧) on March 29.
Others: One independent, county councilor Wang Yung-ching (王永慶).
T-PVI: B+5
Notes:
Result: KMT hold. Hsu Shu-hua wins, 56.0-42.8%.
DPP: Nominated former party-list legislator Frida Tsai (蔡培慧) on March 29.
Others: One independent, county councilor Wang Yung-ching (王永慶).
T-PVI: B+5
Notes:
- KMT incumbent Lin Ming-chen (林明溱) is term-limited out, so this is an open-seat race.
- Hsu has racked up impressive wins in Nantou 2, which at the presidential level is competitive and the "greener" of Nantou's two LY districts -- Tsai Ing-wen carried it in both 2016 and 2020, while Hsu won 57-43% in 2016 and 55-41% in 2020. Before winning a legislative by-election in 2015, Hsu was the mayor of Nantou City (2006-2014), and before that a county councilor (2002-2006).
- Frida Tsai is a leader of the Taiwan Rural Front (台灣農村陣線), an NGO working to prevent agricultural land expropriation. She's one of several candidates with a social activist background who Tsai Ing-wen placed on the DPP's party list in 2016, and she subsequently served a term in the LY. In 2020, she ran against Ma Wen-chun in Nantou 1, losing 53.6-46.4%.
- Tsai was raised in Nantou but moved to Taipei as a teenager, then earned a Ph.D. from NTU in bio-industrial communication.
- Update 8.15. Hsu has submitted a request to Feng-chia University to have her own MA thesis examined for plagiarism; result will be known in October. She appears to be worried about attacks like those that forced Lin Chih-chien out of the Taoyuan race.
- Update 10.26. Frida Tsai has accused the incumbent county executive Lin Ming-chen of vote-buying, in the form of passing out noodle bowls during his "farewell tour." Lin is openly campaigning for Hsu.
- Update 11.3. At a campaign rally, Tsai Ing-wen explicitly accuses Hsu Shu-hua of being "involved with powerful local gangsters" and coming from a political family with a history of "black gold" politics. Hsu was accused in 2012 of paying ward chiefs in Nantou to buy votes, but was never charged. The DPP appears to be focusing more on the political corruption angle in recent days as their candidates have struggled to gain traction against KMT incumbents. In some ways this election cycle feels like a throwback to the 1990s.
Result: KMT hold. Hsu Shu-hua wins, 56.0-42.8%.
Changhua County - 彰化縣
KMT: Renominated incumbent Wang Huei-mei (王惠美).
DPP: Nominated legislator legislator Huang Shiou-fang (黃秀芳) on June 28.
Others: One minor candidate.
T-PVI: Even
Notes:
Result: KMT hold. Wang Hui-mei wins, 56.8-41.9%.
DPP: Nominated legislator legislator Huang Shiou-fang (黃秀芳) on June 28.
Others: One minor candidate.
T-PVI: Even
Notes:
- Wang was a two-term legislator representing Changhua 1 when she ran for magistrate in 2018, and she crushed the DPP incumbent Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷) 53-40%. Before that, she demonstrated some real political talent and resilience in pulling out a victory in a three-way race in 2012 over two candidates from powerful political families in the county, Chen Chin-ting (陳進丁) and Lin Yi-pang (林益邦). She got her start in politics as mayor of Lukang, an old port town that's now a popular tourist attraction.
- Huang is no slouch herself, winning close races in Changhua 2 in 2016 and 2020. But she's spent less time holding office in the county than Wang.
- Much like Taichung, Changhua County is a swing region at the presidential level, but factional politics and political dynasties also run deep here. Wang's approval ratings put her in the middle of the pack among mayors and county executives.
- 2022.9.20-24: RWNews with an online poll that finds Wang way ahead of Huang, 55% to 29%. Likely to tighten somewhat but Wang looks in good shape here so far.
Result: KMT hold. Wang Hui-mei wins, 56.8-41.9%.
- Published on
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.
Taipei - 台北市
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:
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
New Taipei - 新北市
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:
Result: KMT hold. Hou You-yi wins 62.4-37.6%.
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.
- 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.
Result: KMT hold. Hou You-yi wins 62.4-37.6%.
Taoyuan - 桃園市
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:
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%.
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.
- 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.
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%.
Taichung - 台中市
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:
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%.
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.
- 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.
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%.
Tainan - 台南市
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:
Result: DPP hold. Huang wins 48.8-43.6%.
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.
- 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.
Result: DPP hold. Huang wins 48.8-43.6%.
Kaohsiung - 高雄市
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:
Result: DPP hold. Chen Chi-mai wins 58.1-40.2%
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.
- 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.
Result: DPP hold. Chen Chi-mai wins 58.1-40.2%
- Published on
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.
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.
- Published on
NPP candidates ran close to Tsai Ing-wen in the district races. Other non-DPP candidates, not so much.
One of the more interesting developments in Taiwan's 2016 general election was the rise of so-called "Third Force" parties--completely new entrants into the political system, rather than break-aways from the KMT or the DPP. While some of the media commentary got a bit carried away about the significance of these new parties, the founding of one, the New Power Party (NPP), did pose a serious threat to the DPP's chances of winning a majority in the legislature. As an offshoot of the Sunflower Movement, the NPP positioned its message in a way calculated to appeal to pan-green voters, and it recruited high-profile candidates to run in district races, not just the party list. These district candidates had the potential to split the pan-green vote in what everyone expected would be a very anti-KMT year, and in a worst-case scenario for their side, help the KMT hold on to their legislative majority.
In the end, a pan-green split didn't happen. A key reason is that the DPP headed off the threat early: the party formed a kind of pre-electoral coalition by yielding 11 districts to the NPP and other non-DPP candidates in exchange for their support not to run against DPP candidates elsewhere. And the districts that the DPP yielded were, with one exception, far past the critical 57th seat needed to deliver a legislative majority. It turned out to be a good deal for the DPP, which won 68 seats overall. It also, more surprisingly, turned out well for the NPP, which won all three district seats and five overall and became the third largest party in the LY.
The NPP Surprise
My own expectation going into the election was that the NPP candidates would perform worse, on average, than a generic DPP challenger. (In fact, if you read that linked post closely, I was even more specific: 2-4 points worse, on average.) The rationale was pretty simple: Freddy Lim, Hung Tzu-yung, and Huang Kuo-chang were already household names, but their close association with the Sunflower Movement, and the acerbic rhetoric of Huang, especially, suggested they would be fairly polarizing as candidates. And in the traditionally blue-leaning districts of Taipei 5 (Lim) and New Taipei 12 (Huang), I thought they would turn off more voters than they attracted with that approach.
So what actually happened? In the graph above, I've plotted the vote share of each DPP and DPP-endorsed district candidate against Tsai Ing-wen's share of the presidential vote in the same district. DPP incumbents are represented by solid dots; challengers (i.e. non-incumbents) by hollow ones; NPP candidates by hollow squares, and other non-DPP candidates by hollow triangles. (A hearty thank you to Frozen Garlic for doing the yeoman's work of sorting the presidential race vote totals by LY district and making these data publicly available.)
Thoughts on this below the break.
My own expectation going into the election was that the NPP candidates would perform worse, on average, than a generic DPP challenger. (In fact, if you read that linked post closely, I was even more specific: 2-4 points worse, on average.) The rationale was pretty simple: Freddy Lim, Hung Tzu-yung, and Huang Kuo-chang were already household names, but their close association with the Sunflower Movement, and the acerbic rhetoric of Huang, especially, suggested they would be fairly polarizing as candidates. And in the traditionally blue-leaning districts of Taipei 5 (Lim) and New Taipei 12 (Huang), I thought they would turn off more voters than they attracted with that approach.
So what actually happened? In the graph above, I've plotted the vote share of each DPP and DPP-endorsed district candidate against Tsai Ing-wen's share of the presidential vote in the same district. DPP incumbents are represented by solid dots; challengers (i.e. non-incumbents) by hollow ones; NPP candidates by hollow squares, and other non-DPP candidates by hollow triangles. (A hearty thank you to Frozen Garlic for doing the yeoman's work of sorting the presidential race vote totals by LY district and making these data publicly available.)
Thoughts on this below the break.
- Published on
Election banner for Yosi Takun (孔文吉), running in the Mountain Aborigine District for the January 2016 Legislative Yuan Election. Photo taken in Wulai, New Taipei.
August 1 is Indigenous Peoples' Day in Taiwan--a day that usually passes without much media attention. This year is different: President Tsai Ing-wen is planning to issue a formal apology on behalf of the Republic of China government to Taiwan's indigenous peoples and to outline her government's indigenous policies. That has now become a partisan issue. Five of the six aborigine (原住民 yuanzhumin) district representatives in the current Legislative Yuan are going to skip the event; the only one to attend is the only district DPP member, Chen Ying (陳瑩). The other two legislators, Kolas Yotaka (谷辣斯·尤達卡) of the DPP and Kawlo Iyun Pacidal (高潞·以用·巴魕剌) of the NPP, are both party list legislators, and so have to take their own party line into greater account.
Although they're often overlooked in writing about Taiwan's electoral politics, Taiwan has reserved seats in the Legislative Yuan for aborigine representatives since 1972. Today, representatives from these districts hold more than 5% of the total seats in the legislature (6/113)--if they were all part of the same party, they would be the third largest in the LY, ahead of both the NPP and PFP. For anyone interested in learning more, I have a CDDRL working paper on the history of these seats and the evolution of aborigine representation in the Legislative Yuan. The abstract is below.
Although they're often overlooked in writing about Taiwan's electoral politics, Taiwan has reserved seats in the Legislative Yuan for aborigine representatives since 1972. Today, representatives from these districts hold more than 5% of the total seats in the legislature (6/113)--if they were all part of the same party, they would be the third largest in the LY, ahead of both the NPP and PFP. For anyone interested in learning more, I have a CDDRL working paper on the history of these seats and the evolution of aborigine representation in the Legislative Yuan. The abstract is below.
The Aborigine Constituencies in the Taiwanese Legislature
The Republic of China on Taiwan has long reserved legislative seats for its indigenous minority, the yuanzhumin. While most of Taiwan’s political institutions were transformed as the island democratized, the dual aborigine constituencies continue to be based on an archaic, Japanese-era distinction between “mountain” and “plains” aborigines that corresponds poorly to current conditions. The aborigine quota system has also served to buttress Kuomintang (KMT) control of the legislature: the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and “pan-indigenous” parties have been almost entirely shut out of these seats. Nevertheless, aborigine legislators have made a modest but meaningful difference for indigenous communities. The reserved seats were initially established during the martial law era as a purely symbolic form of representation, but during the democratic era they have acquired substantive force as well. Taiwan’s indigenous peoples have not always been well-served by their elected legislators, but they would be worse off without them.
The Republic of China on Taiwan has long reserved legislative seats for its indigenous minority, the yuanzhumin. While most of Taiwan’s political institutions were transformed as the island democratized, the dual aborigine constituencies continue to be based on an archaic, Japanese-era distinction between “mountain” and “plains” aborigines that corresponds poorly to current conditions. The aborigine quota system has also served to buttress Kuomintang (KMT) control of the legislature: the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and “pan-indigenous” parties have been almost entirely shut out of these seats. Nevertheless, aborigine legislators have made a modest but meaningful difference for indigenous communities. The reserved seats were initially established during the martial law era as a purely symbolic form of representation, but during the democratic era they have acquired substantive force as well. Taiwan’s indigenous peoples have not always been well-served by their elected legislators, but they would be worse off without them.