Can the KMT Reclaim the Legislature in the 2020 Taiwan Elections?

Taiwan, for the most part, transitioned from a one-party state led by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to a multi-party democratic state during the 1990s. One branch of government, however—the legislature—was led by the KMT either outright or with the help of ideological allies in an unbroken streak until 2016, when the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) finally seized the majority.

Just 11 months ago, on November 24, 2018, the Taiwanese electorate delivered a landslide sweep of local offices to the KMT, led by the “Han wave” phenomenon of supporters for the unlikely candidacy of a nearly unknown former lawmaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) for mayor of Kaohsiung and a remarkable show of strength and unity in the KMT.

The KMT, hoping to carry this wave of support through to the January 2020 presidential and legislative elections, nominated Han as its candidate for president after an unusual primary—in spite of him being elected mayor of Kaohsiung just a few months earlier. By the time they nominated him formally as their candidate, the “Han wave” had clearly crested. For a majority of the electorate, the shine had come off. The party’s presidential aspirations now look increasingly unlikely by the day, with his support in polls dropping over 15 percent on average against incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文). The party’s hopes of him leading another charismatic upsurge of hope look to be all but dead.

While a massive landslide like last November is unlikely, the KMT may pick up some seats in the legislature. However, they have little to no chance to win back the majority.

The KMT’s ideology with regards to China and cross-strait affairs makes it very difficult for them to be electable for the presidency. Despite this, they retain considerable support, contacts and infrastructure in local areas. They are also ahead of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the polls for party support, though not by a huge margin and not anywhere near a majority. On average they have been polling in the upper 20s to mid-30s in party support polls for the legislature, with the DPP trailing by roughly 5% on average in recent polls.

In Taiwan’s legislative body, the Legislative Yuan, a party must claim 57 of 113 total seats to win a majority. Of those 113 seats, 73 are directly elected from geographical districts. 34 are allocated proportionally to political parties that score 5% or higher in a “party list” poll held concurrently, while six seats are allocated to indigenous constituencies.

Currently, the KMT holds 35 seats. Most of those will likely be kept: If those seats survived the landslide that swept them out in 2016, they are likely pretty solid.

Of the six indigenous seats, the KMT won five in 2016, and consistently does well there as indigenous communities have traditionally viewed the DPP as dominated by the majority Hoklo community, which they distrust for historical reasons. As President, Tsai has tried to improve relations with indigenous communities by issuing an official apology for past injustices and promoting language and cultural activities. Many indigenous leaders and activists, however, have protested the DPP government over ancestral land rights and other issues that remain contentious. It is unclear if Tsai’s actions have improved relations enough to change their vote, but historically speaking, they will probably continue to vote majority KMT.

11 of the KMT’s current seats are from the proportional party list, representing their 27% of the party vote. Most polling as of this writing has them slightly higher, in the upper 20s to mid-30s. In the next two-and-a-half months, the KMT is going to need to bring in more undecided voters and try to win the votes of traditional third party supporters if they hope to significantly boost their seat count by party list. Based on current trends, this does not look very likely.

In geographical districts, the winds are blowing strongly both for and against the KMT going into the election.

One advantage that could help the KMT is voter turnout. While Han is no longer generating much enthusiasm with the general public, those who continue to support him support him passionately, and are generally in the 40 to 60-year-old demographic, who are more likely to have the time and resources to get to the polling station where their household is registered.

There are also special interest groups that are passionate and motivated in their anger at the DPP administration that are likely to be well organized, including civil servants who saw their pensions cut and opponents of marriage equality. In the election last November, opponents of marriage equality mobilized very effectively to vote for KMT candidates and vote on referendums constructed to block same-sex marriage, despite Taiwan’s constitutional court mandating its legality in 2017.

Both of these groups may be backed and aided by old-school local KMT patronage factions that still have some pull in rural areas and showed surprising cohesion in the last election despite historically being adversarial. But there are signs the factions are not as unified this time. The combination of these various groups may mean that the KMT could show increased strength in the south of Taiwan—where the DPP has dominated for the last 20 years—especially its rural and socially conservative districts.

Will this be enough to unseat DPP incumbents, however? A clean sweep of DPP incumbents seems highly unlikely, but picking up some seats does seem quite possible, and the mobilized turnout could boost them in the party list proportional polling. DPP disunity in Pingtung in particular may help the KMT’s chances there.

There are plenty of countervailing winds, however. As a presidential candidate, Han is looking like both an asset and a liability. While his core supporters may help turnout, his high disapproval ratings with the general public may push some voters to other parties, or simply to not vote. Only 82% of KMT voters in a recent poll said they supported Han, as opposed to 97% of DPP voters who support Tsai in the presidential election. In many respects presidential candidates are the cheerleaders and motivators to get the electorate out to support not only themselves, but also for their party—and there has traditionally been a correlation between the party vote for president and in the legislature. Han may be turning off as many voters as he is attracting, and that will likely depress some support for their candidates for the legislature.

Another big problem for the KMT is buyer’s remorse in key areas of the country. In Kaohsiung, a recall campaign against Han has collected enough signatures to begin the process of holding a recall vote after December 25, which could see him unseated by the very electorate that anointed him mayor last November.

In the spring, polling showed that both Han and Taichung mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕), also of the KMT, would lose if the election were held again. Things have not exactly improved since then for the mayoral upstarts. In September, CommonWealth Magazine released their report on popularity of local administrations, and the results were not good for the KMT. At the very bottom of the list was Han’s administration, with Taichung’s Lu second from the bottom and Changhua County Commissioner Wang Huei-mei’s (王惠美) administration fourth from the bottom. Overall, eight of the bottom 10 (out of 22) were KMT administrations, mostly those elected last November. Only one KMT-led administration of significant population did fairly well at number 7 on the list: Hou You-yi’s (侯友宜) New Taipei administration. By comparison, five of the six administrations the DPP still control made it into the top 10; only Tainan fared poorly at number 14.

This widespread regret suggests that independents that swung to the KMT in those areas last year may swing back to the middle, or even back toward the DPP if they feel there is no better option.

While party identification polling is all over the map, a few things seem consistent. The KMT is up a bit from the 2016 election, but not by a huge margin. The DPP is down from 2016, by a fairly large margin.

What remains unknown is whether the advantages the DPP should have historically are going to hold up. There is a striking gap in the polls between the high support for reelecting Tsai and support for the DPP as a party. Additionally, it is unclear how much of an advantage incumbency will confer in this election. Traditionally, being the incumbent—and this time DPP candidates are the incumbents in the majority of the seats—provides some advantage, but the last two election cycles both were striking in producing landslide defeats for incumbents nationwide. The tide moved sharply toward the DPP in 2016, then sharply to the KMT in 2018. So far, however, polling does not seem to suggest that the tide is really with either party at this point.

Third parties are on the rise, possibly claiming as much as a quarter of the electorate. They may do well in the party list vote, but will struggle in geographical districts. They lack the infrastructure, experience, funds, connections and candidates with the name recognition of the big two parties. Those district candidates, however, could be key in winning more party list seats. Even if they only get out 5% or 10% of the vote, those voters are also likely to vote for the party on the party list, helping to boost turnout.

Several of the more respectable polls have shown Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) newly created Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) polling at a little over 10%, suggesting they are now the third most popular party. Ko has stated that the party’s goal is to block any party from winning a majority of the seats in the legislature. Presumably, this is to ensure his party holds the balance of power. His party is looking good for winning some party list seats; they are very likely to win more than the 5% party list threshold necessary to win seats. In geographical districts, however, they will likely struggle. Ko’s efforts to bolster independent candidates by using his image has failed almost across the board. His party may also get some support from Foxconn founder Terry Gou (郭台銘), who lost in the KMT presidential primary but did attract a “Gou Family Army” of supporters. They are rumored to be planning a meetup in early November to possibly coordinate their efforts.

The New Power Party (NPP) is down a bit in the polls, having lost two key legislators in intra-party disputes over the direction of the party. However, the party is still polling at a hair above 5%, so it may yet manage to get some party list seats—if it can hold on. They still have some key popular figures in the party—Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) being the most prominent—and in the last few years have built up name recognition and some party infrastructure. They also have some locally elected councilors who may help with getting the vote out. The two candidates that left the party, Freddy Lim (林昶佐) and Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸) are now independents, but are backed by the DPP, who are not running candidates in their districts.

The People’s First Party (PFP), which has three legislators now, is polling well under the 5% needed to keep them in the legislature. That figure may well be deceptive, however, as the party will be running a presidential candidate, who will likely bring those numbers up noticeably and bump the party over the 5% threshold. In the 2016 elections, the PFP got 6.5% of the party list vote, likely pulled up by the 12.8% of the presidential vote garnered by their candidate, party chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜). They may run Soong again, and with Han suffering in the polls, Soong may again attract double digits in the presidential race. Other potential PFP presidential candidates include ex-speaker of the legislature Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), who is openly vying for their nomination, Terry Gou, or even Ko Wen-je. The party is not ruling out any of those options. Wang probably would not do much better than Soong in the polls, but he has extensive connections on the ground and could be a big asset to the party. Gou claims to not be interested in running, and he appears to be serious—but he’s changed his mind before. Ko would likely be interested, but he now has his own political party and his gaffe-laden comments might have turned off James Soong too much to make such a match possible.

Though a bit more of a long-shot, the Taiwan Action Party Alliance (TAPA) still has a chance of reaching the 5% bar. Its presidential nominee, ex-Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), dropped out of the race on Saturday after struggling to gain enough signatures to appear on the ballot. Lu had aimed to pull socially conservative voters away from Tsai with her promises to undo marriage equality, and to sway socially conservative voters from Han who are more pro-Taiwan. Lu had appeared in some polls over the 5% margin before dropping out. Whether TAPA is able to reach 5% in the party-list vote and gain seats in the legislature is hard to say.

At the end of the day, however, the number of seats going to third party candidates and independents will be limited. Only a handful of district seats will be competitive to them at best, with incumbent independent candidates Freddy Lim and Hung Tzu-yung being most prominent. Even if, as polling now suggests, they were to receive 25% of the vote—which would be high—whether those votes would count toward those party list seats would depend entirely on if the parties voted for reach the 5% threshold. In total, third parties and independents are probably capped at about a maximum of 12 seats in the 113 seat legislature, and that is the most optimistic outcome for them.

The lion’s share of the seats will go to the DPP and the KMT. Currently, the DPP holds 68 and the KMT 35, and to win a majority requires 57. Both parties have a lot to be nervous about. Both are languishing in the polls and the political environment has been unsettled and unpredictable in both of the last elections. Both parties have internal tensions and divisions, with the social conservatives in the DPP upset over marriage equality and moderates and supporters of technocratic governance in the KMT alarmed at Han’s unpredictability and often unworkable and ill-thought out policy proposals.

However, several key factors point to the DPP remaining the biggest party in the legislature by a large margin, barring a major political shock between now and election day (This is not unprecedented in Taiwan.) Of primary concern to most voters is Taiwan’s relationship with China. On that, the KMT is far outside the mainstream of public opinion—but Tsai is very near the center, and she’ll pull a lot of voters concerned about China’s recent belligerence toward Taiwan to her party. The aforementioned buyer’s remorse will also weaken the KMT in key areas where they need to do well to stage a serious comeback—especially in central Taiwan. The large mass of independents and those fed up with both parties will likely either stay home, pick the safe bet of the DPP or vote for third parties—not the erratic Han-led KMT.

The KMT may pull off some surprise wins. It will stay competitive enough to ensure the battle for the legislature will be filled with intrigue. Voters, however, should not expect a sweeping wave of KMT triumphs.

(Feature image from KMT Legislative Caucus Facebook Page)