Taiwan’s presidential elections, it is often said, are decided along lines of national identity. Indeed, what stood out after the recent presidential election is the overlap between the results and the languages spoken in Taiwan. When comparing the maps, the regions where Taiwanese is more commonly used at home also have higher vote shares for President Tsai Ing-wen 蔡英文 of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who was reelected last month. But there is actually a better way to look at the impact of national identity on Taiwan’s presidential election. In 2018, a referendum was held in which Taiwanese were asked if they wanted to use the name “Taiwan,” rather than “Chinese Taipei,” to compete in the Olympic games in Tokyo this year. The referendum question asked:
“Do you agree to the use of ‘Taiwan’ when participating in all international sport competitions, including the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics?”
Officially, Taiwan goes by the name Republic of China (ROC). The short story is that China was called the ROC when it was ruled by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government from 1912 to 1949, but became the People’s Republic of China (PRC) when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took over. Taiwan was placed under the KMT’s rule, under the banner of the ROC, when Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 and his KMT forces retreated to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War to the CCP.
Initially, the ROC was recognized internationally as the sole legitimate government of China, largely due to the Cold War and global anti-communist sentiments. In 1971, however, the United Nations (UN) switched its recognition to the PRC. Chiang, the authoritarian leader of the ROC at the time, pulled out of the UN prior to the switch, after also rejecting the United States’ suggestion that the ROC take up a seat at the UN as “Taiwan.”
The second rejection of the opportunity to be officially recognized as “Taiwan” was in 1981 when Chiang Ching-kuo 蔣經國—who became president after the death of his father, Chiang Kai-shek—refused a proposal by the International Olympic Committee to compete under the banner of “Taiwan.” Taiwan has since been stuck with the label “Chinese Taipei.”
Tsai, as president, has referred to Taiwan as “ROC (Taiwan).” It’s an attempt to appease nearly everyone: Taiwanese still aligned to the KMT’s ROC concept, Taiwanese who do not identify with the ROC, and the many younger voters who simply identify with Taiwan as “Taiwan.”
After the KMT arrived in Taiwan, it imposed martial law in 1949 and did not lift it until 1987. Taiwan had its first free and direct presidential election in 1996, which was won by the KMT’s Lee Teng-hui 李登輝. The DPP, which was formed in 1986 in opposition to the KMT’s authoritarian rule, first won the presidency in 2000. Since Tsai won in 2016, the DPP has held both the presidency and the legislative majority, rendering the KMT an opposition party at the national level.
The 2018 referendum on Taiwan’s Olympic name was seen in some corners as a shadow vote for Taiwan’s independence. In others, its ultimate failure—voters chose to keep the name “Chinese Taipei”—was seen as a sign of pragmatism by Taiwan’s voters, who know their participation in global sporting events depends upon their willingness to bend to the rules set by international organizations heavily influenced by the desires of Beijing. The International Olympic Committee warned Taiwan it may lose its right to compete in the 2020 Games should it insist upon using the name “Taiwan,” and some Taiwanese athletes campaigned to keep the name “Chinese Taipei” so they would not be excluded from the Games. It can be safely assumed, however, that those in the pro-“Taiwan” camp saw the vote as a way to formalize their insistence that Taiwan be recognized as Taiwan.
Using the results of the referendum as a proxy measure of Taiwanese who identify more strongly with “Taiwan” and those who have lesser identification with the name, I compared the referendum results with this year’s presidential election results to see if it is indeed true that Taiwanese vote along lines of national identity during presidential elections.
There does appear to be a case to be made, at least for Taiwanese who have a greater connection to “Taiwan.”
As can be seen from the chart below, there is a very clear and strong relationship where a stronger identification with “Taiwan” indicates a higher chance of voting for the DPP’s Tsai. (Taiwan does not conduct exit polls for its elections, but data of the election results are available to the most minute political boundaries. For this analysis, I compared data at the township/city/district level.)
Similarly, in the chart below, the greater the rejection of the use of the name “Taiwan,” the higher the votes for the KMT. But note in both charts how the votes for the KMT and votes not to use “Taiwan” are more scattered, as compared to votes for the DPP and to use “Taiwan,” which tend to coalesce together.
Indeed, when comparing the districts based on those which voted predominantly for Tsai, the relationship becomes much clearer. A tight relationship can be seen in these districts between the Taiwanese identity (when using the vote in favor of the name “Taiwan” as a proxy measure) and the vote for the DPP’s Tsai.
The relationship, however, is less tight in districts won by the KMT. While there is a relationship between the KMT’s higher wins and districts which align less with the name “Taiwan,” they do not seem to gel as strongly around an oppositional national identity.
After sharing the results with one of my colleagues at the Risk Society and Policy Research Center at the National Taiwan University, Pien Chung-pei 卞中佩, he suggested that I also compare the referendum results with 2016’s presidential results.
And the same pattern appeared! Districts which were relatively more in favor of using “Taiwan” also voted more assertively for Tsai.
Similarly, districts which more strongly disagreed with using “Taiwan” also showed a tendency to vote more strongly for the KMT.
Again, in districts which Tsai won in 2016, the relationship with support for “Taiwan” is also tighter. You can see a straggler in the scatterplot chart, but this is due to the third presidential candidate grabbing more votes than both the DPP and the KMT at the Cimei Township—the third candidate, James Soong from the People’s First Party (PFP), took 485 votes at Cimei, compared to Tsai’s 301 and 191 for the KMT’s Eric Chu, who was its presidential candidate in 2016.
But when comparing only the DPP and the KMT, the DPP still took more votes than the KMT.
Again, in the districts the KMT won, the relationship between the KMT votes and rejection of the name “Taiwan” for use at the Olympic games, while present, is also looser in 2016.
To look at the longer-term trend, I also compared the 2018 referendum results with 2008’s presidential results, when the KMT won back the presidency after two terms of DPP rule from 2000. The year 2008 also saw the KMT win its best presidential results to date. Understandably, it would be better to use data more closely matching the duration of 2008’s election results but due to a lack of available data, I used the 2018 referendum results as a proxy measure.
Again, there seems to be a clear relationship between districts with relatively higher support for “Taiwan” and districts which have relatively higher support for the DPP.
The same goes for districts less in favor of “Taiwan” and those which were more likely to vote for the KMT.
Comparing between the elections is also interesting—since 2008, more and more districts have been shifting toward voting for the DPP’s presidential candidate.
However, votes for the DPP between 2016 and 2020 look like they have more or less stabilized, which could suggest that support for “Taiwan” as a national identity might be at its current saturation point.
There has also been a decline in support for the KMT since 2008, though it seems like the KMT managed to make gains in 2020 over its poor showing in 2016. However, this could be a partial effect of voters shifting their support from the PFP in 2016 to the KMT in 2020, but more on this later.
There is another useful dataset to compare with: trends in whether Taiwanese people self-describe as Taiwanese, Chinese, or both Taiwanese and Chinese, which are tracked by the Election Study Center at the National Chengchi University (NCCU).
When comparing the overall presidential results at the national level with NCCU’s surveys, there also seems to be a relationship between Taiwanese who identified more with Taiwanese and votes for the DPP’s presidential candidates. It suggests that as more and more voters identify with the Taiwanese identity, more and more of them are also voting for the DPP, as opposed to the KMT. (Note that for 2020, the NCCU data is taken from 2019 due to a lack of data currently from 2020).
On the other side, there seems to be somewhat of a relationship with those who identify with both a Taiwanese and Chinese identity and votes for the KMT’s presidential candidate, though the relationship seems less clear. (The NCCU data also asks respondents if they identify solely as “Chinese.” A very low percentage of respondents, which has steadily declined since the survey started, answer affirmatively.)
However, when adding the votes of James Soong 宋楚瑜 into the KMT’s votes, there appears to be a clearer relationship. Soong has competed in every election since 2000 as the third presidential challenger, except for 2008. He was a KMT member before deciding to run as an independent in 2000 after failing to secure the KMT nomination. He founded the PFP after coming in second in that election, splitting the KMT’s votes.
In fact, when comparing votes for Soong with votes for the KMT’s Han Kuo-yu 韓國瑜 at this year’s presidential election, districts which voted for Soong in general also show a higher propensity to vote for Han, suggesting that these voters could be aligned. There is a subset of the data where the KMT managed to wrangle over votes from PFP, in which the KMT managed to win above 60% or so of the votes—these are in what is believed to be the hardcore KMT areas in Taiwan’s outlying islands near China, Kinmen and Matsu; in the eastern part of Taiwan (Hualien, Taitung, southern Yilan, eastern Pingtung) as well as in parts of Miaoli and Hsinchu County in the northwestern part of Taiwan. In the rest of the areas, it looks like the PFP managed to split the KMT’s votes.
On the other hand, districts more likely to vote for the PFP’s Soong were less likely to vote for the DPP’s Tsai, suggesting different alignments between the voters. The subset of data which showed weak support for both the DPP and the PFP are in the same aforementioned “hardcore” KMT areas, including the easternmost parts of Kaohsiung City.
However, support for a party during a presidential election does not always indicate identification with the said party. Comparing with another dataset on party identification from the Election Study Center at the National Chengchi University, it shows that while votes for the DPP have risen since 1996, identification among the Taiwanese with the DPP has remained at only around 20% to 30% since 2000.
When comparing votes for the KMT (including the PFP), while identification with the KMT has hovered around 20% to 35%, there is also a gap between votes for the KMT and PFP and identification with the KMT. (The PFP is used in this comparison on the assumption that there are overlaps in their supporters, who sometimes switch between the two parties.)
But if we were to exclude the PFP from the comparison, things become more fluid. It seems that while the KMT could still retain support of its core supporters during the presidential elections, such as in 2000, 2016 and 2020 where vote shares were much closer to party identification with the KMT, it does seem to be the case that voters for the KMT and the PFP tend to swing between the two parties. Notably, there is also declining support for the KMT at Taiwan’s presidential elections, by 19.9 percentage points, from 2008 to 2020.
As mentioned, votes for the DPP at the presidential elections seem to have stabilized between 2016 and 2020. The chart below shows that the change in vote share for the DPP between 2016 and 2020 seems to be relatively minimal in the districts it won, suggesting that voter identification with “Taiwan” might have reached a current level of saturation in these districts—the DPP saw relatively small changes of about ±10 percentage points.
However, in the districts where the KMT won a majority (mainly in the outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu, as well as the eastern stretch, i.e. Hualien and Taitung, and the northwest part of Taiwan, i.e. the Miaoli and Hsinchu counties), the KMT saw an increase in its vote share by between 4 and 38 percentage points from 2016 to 2020, which shows that the draw of the KMT’s Han Kuo-yu at this year’s election might have had an effect on some voters.
It is useful to note that when comparing over the longer-term, from 2008, the DPP has actually seen a strengthening in most of the 280 districts it won (except for three), by up to nearly 60 percentage points in a few districts (the top three of which saw increases of 49 to 59 percentage points were all in Kaohsiung—in the Ziguan, Jiading and Renwu districts).
Also, since 2008, the KMT has also seen declining influence in the 88 districts it won by a majority in the 2020 presidential election (except for five)—by close to 40 percentage points in one district.
From 2016 to 2020, there seems to be greater polarization between the areas won by the DPP and KMT, along with greater support in the KMT strongholds.
However, the long-term trend is that there has been a gradual consolidation toward the DPP—or rather, based on the assumption above, toward greater identification with “Taiwan.”
Indeed, when comparing all of Taiwan’s districts, the DPP actually saw an increase in its vote share in all but eight districts between 2008 and 2020, which clearly shows a gradual shift in voter attitudes towards greater identification with “Taiwan.”
When comparing the first half of the 184 districts which the DPP saw the highest increases, 35.9% of them are in the northern districts (Taipei, New Taipei, Keelung, Taoyuan, Hsinchu City and County), 24.50% in the central districts (Taichung, Changhua and Nantou), and 21.7% in the southern districts (Kaohsiung, Tainan, Chiayi, Pingtung, Yunlin). There were 11 in the eastern districts of Hualien and Taitung, ten in the northwestern district of Miaoli, six in the outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu, five in the northeastern district of Yilan, and one in Penghu—all of which lean toward the KMT, except for Yilan, where the DPP is strong. The lower number of districts in the south is not surprising, given that the DPP is already relatively strong in these areas. Nonetheless, among the 16 districts where the DPP saw the highest growth, seven of them are in the south, among which six are in Kaohsiung. The DPP’s strong showing in the north also shows how the KMT is losing support rapidly in these areas.
In the latter half of the districts where the DPP saw lesser increases (and eight with negative growth), only 6% are in the north, 12.5% in the central districts, and 58.7% in the south. There are 18 in the eastern districts of Hualien and Taitung, eight in the northwestern district of Miaoli, seven in the northeastern district on Yilan, five in Penghu, and four in Kinmen and Matsu. Surprisingly, more districts in Kinmen and Matsu saw greater gains in the first half (six districts) than in the second half (four districts). I also include Hsinchu County with the northern districts because even though it has voted largely for the KMT, 10 out of its 13 districts still belonged to the first half of the group, with larger increases for the DPP. Even though Yilan has more districts in the second half, it is also not surprising given that the 12 districts in Yilan are already where the DPP is strong in, except for two in southern Yilan.
The interesting thing to note is that the majority of the eight districts that the DPP saw a weakening and where the KMT saw a strengthening since 2008 are in Kaohsiung City: Taoyuan District (an increase of 33.4 percentage points for the KMT), Maolin District (24.2), Namaxia District (23.8), Taixi Township (13.9), Jiaxian District (13.2), Haiduan Township (10.2), Yanping Township (6.2) and Shanlin District (2.2).
Contrary to the prevailing thinking that the voter turnout in Kaohsiung helped DPP win Kaohsiung back from the KMT’s Han Kuo-yu—who won as mayor in Kaohsiung’s local election in 2018 but took a three-month leave to run for the presidential election, leading to a retaliation among Kaohsiung residents as a whole, who swung back to the DPP at the 2020 presidential election—there were pockets within Kaohsiung where the increase in turnout actually worked in favor of Han. Turnout increased by 17.3 percentage points, 15.6 percentage points, 14.7 percentage points, 9.6 percentage points and 9.6 percentage points respectively in the Taoyuan, Namaxia, Maolin, Shanlin and Jiaxian districts. In fact, Taoyuan, Namaxia and Maolin saw among the top six highest increases in voter turnout, which could have helped reverse the declining support seen in the KMT’s other strongholds.
It is interesting, therefore, to note that not only did some districts in Kaohsiung see some of the strongest gains for the DPP since 2008, the KMT also saw a strengthening in some of these districts. This suggests that while Han’s populist rhetoric was able to make inroads in parts of Kaohsiung, the city is also at the forefront in the strengthening of the Taiwanese identity. A case can be made that Han’s populist rhetoric could have led to greater polarization among the districts in Kaohsiung.
But looking at the percentage point changes might be misleading, because when looking at the actual number of voters, votes for the DPP and the KMT increased in almost all Taiwan’s districts between 2016 and 2020, except for very small reductions in 14 districts. Interestingly, in Taoyuan City’s Taoyuan District, both the DPP and the KMT saw the highest increase in numerical votes—33,667 and 32,165, respectively.
In fact, there is a correlation in the increase in the number of votes on both sides between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
There is then the question of whether the increase in the number of votes on both sides is due to the increased voter turnout or due to the transfer of votes from the PFP’s Soong to either the DPP or KMT. (We saw in Kaohsiung’s case that the increase in votes could be partially attributed to the higher voter turnout.) In 2016, Soong won 12.8% of the votes, but this figure dropped to 4.3% in 2020.
Below, I used a stacked column chart to try to compare the changes—the chart is charted using the increase in votes for the DPP, from the district with the highest increase to the district with the lowest, from left to right. In the first half of the 184 districts on the left, the DPP won the majority of them while the KMT only won 11, or 6%, of them. In these districts, it looks like there is a more or less equal increase in the number of votes for the DPP and the KMT. In the right half, the KMT won 77 of the seats, or 42% of the seats. By looking at the chart, you can tell from the left half that the DPP won in the areas where it could mobilize as many voters as the KMT, but in the right half, part of the reason why the DPP could not win as many votes seems to be because the DPP could not mobilize as many voters in these districts. It is not possible to tell whether the PFP’s votes in 2016 went to the DPP or KMT as a whole, but on the right half, it could be assumed that most PFP votes went to the KMT since the increase in DPP votes in these districts is less than the votes lost by the PFP. In addition, it is assumed that in general, most of the votes the PFP lost would have gone to the KMT since their voters are more closely aligned, which would suggest that in the areas the DPP won in the right half, it was able to get more new voters onboard, as some of the KMT’s Han’s increases would have been absorbed from the PFP’s Soong. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, while higher votes for the PFP correlated with higher votes for the KMT, the “hardcore areas” show an opposite trend in the 2020 presidential election, which clearly shows that voters in these districts deflected back to the KMT, thus costing the PFP its votes in the 2016 election.
In the next chart, I computed the increase in votes for the DPP and the KMT, and the decrease in votes for the PFP, against the total number of valid voters in the 2020 presidential election, to look at the proportionate increase or decrease in votes. The chart is charted using the difference in the vote shares between the DPP and the KMT in each district, starting from the difference most in favor of the DPP to that least in favor of the DPP, from left to right. The dots in pink are the voter turnout in each district.
Similar to the previous chart, the areas in which Tsai saw bigger wins (the right three-quarters of the chart) were in areas where the DPP was able to mobilize as many voters as the KMT, and there were similar increases in the number of voters on both sides. The areas where the DPP saw the biggest losses (the left quarter of the chart) were in KMT strongholds where the KMT was able to mobilize more voters. However, even so, note that the voter turnout in these districts were also relatively lower, which means a pool of voters which seemed not to align with what both the DPP and KMT represent to voters in general (non-alignment to the Taiwanese-Chinese national identity dichotomy, perhaps). Also, as in the previous chart, note that the losses from PFP would likely have gone to the KMT.
For example, in Hsinchu County’s Wufeng Township, where the KMT saw the greatest proportionate increase in votes (as compared with the valid votes), there was an increase of 388 valid votes and Soong lost 779 votes, which is a total of 1,267 votes up for grabs. Meanwhile, Tsai only took in an additional 72 votes while Han increased KMT votes by 1,095, showing that most of the increase in voter turnout and Soong’s loss would have benefitted KMT. However, on Orchid Island in Taitung County, where the KMT saw the fifth highest proportionate increase, there was an increase of 387 valid votes while Soong lost 462 votes. However, Tsai managed to pick up an additional 223 votes, even as Han got another 626. Thus it is not as clear-cut in this case, where Tsai also managed to make relative gains.
This suggests that if the DPP had been able to mobilize voters in these areas to vote for it, it might have been able to win in some of these districts. For example, on Kinmen’s Wuqiu Islands, the KMT won by more than 70 percentage points over the DPP, but voter turnout was only 21.1%. It is the same in Kinmen’s Lieyu Township, where the KMT won by 63 percentage points over the DPP but voter turnout was only 32.6%. For the Kinmen islands as a whole, the KMT won by 53.1%, but voter turnout was only 40.1%, which means that only 21% of the overall population which could vote in Kinmen actually supported the KMT, with 59.9% of the population not showing up to vote. Voter turnout was the lowest in Kinmen and Matsu, as well as in the eastern Taiwan stretch of Taitung and Hualien, which makes them KMT “strongholds” with the important caveat of their low turnout.
Indeed, when comparing with voter turnout, the higher the voter turnout, the lower the votes would be for the KMT in those districts.
The higher the voter turnout, the higher the votes for the DPP’s Tsai.
To conclude, I started out mainly wanting to find out how much impact national identity has on Taiwan’s presidential elections. The answer is that its influence is considerable. In fact, voter identification as Taiwanese (as opposed to being Chinese or being both) have been growing stronger and stronger over the past three decades, and given Taiwan’s two-party system, it means that Taiwanese have tended towards voting for the DPP rather than the KMT, since the latter represented an attachment to the outdated concept of an ROC while the former is seen as a champion for the national identity of Taiwan.
While it looks like the KMT’s vote share in the districts it won has increased between 2016 and 2020, when looking at the actual number of votes, the reality is that both the DPP and the KMT have seen an increase in their votes in the majority of the districts, and the KMT might have simply absorbed most of the votes from the PFP due to the alignment of their voter base. The districts where the DPP did not see significant gains were in the KMT “strongholds” in the outlying islands and the eastern stretch of Taiwan’s mainland, where the KMT could gain primarily because of the low turnout, on top of by benefiting from the PFP’s losses.
The more nuanced understanding to this, however, is that, while the higher voter turnout has benefited the DPP on the whole, there were some districts—especially those in Kaohsiung—where the higher voter turnout in a few districts helped flipped the situation in favor of the KMT’s Han, while the DPP also saw strong gains in some others. While the idea in some quarters is that Han’s populism had failed in Taiwan, the fact that Han was able to strengthen the KMT’s vote share in what is considered an overall DPP stronghold in Kaohsiung also showed how Han’s populist rhetoric did work in a targeted manner, but not only that, to polarize Kaohsiung voters, though a further analysis is required to understand how his rhetoric affected the population differently—whether it be by age, income or education, etc.
Finally, votes for the DPP do not necessarily mean identification with the DPP, as comparison with the NCCU data suggests, and it might seem that the lack of options could have forced voters to tend towards the DPP. Similarly, votes for the KMT do not necessarily mean alignment with the KMT, and in fact, Taiwanese who vote for KMT are not exclusively identifying themselves as Chinese, but as both Taiwanese and Chinese (basing on the comparison with the NCCU data), which suggests that there might be a disconnect between the KMT’s perceived alignment with China and the voters who are voting for the KMT, which again could be due to the lack of alternative choices for voters. It could also be an additional explanation as to why the voter turnout in the apparent KMT strongholds is also low – neither the DPP or KMT appealed to how voters identify themselves based on national identity. Moreover, there is also the question of whether NCCU’s survey needs to be more inclusive to cater for the indigenous populations who might not identify as Chinese, or who might not identify as Taiwanese the way it is popularly defined, or for those who might identify as both Taiwanese and indigenous.
Indeed, READr interviewed 1,414 Taiwanese at 21 presidential rallies last November and found that of Han’s supporters, their sense of national identities were split—21% saw themselves as Taiwanese, but 45.1% saw themselves as both Taiwanese first and Chinese as well, and 20% saw themselves as Chinese first and also Taiwanese. But for Tsai’s supporters, it was very clear-cut—94.8% saw themselves as Taiwanese.
This would also explain why votes for Tsai in the last two elections show a tight correlation with the Taiwanese national identity, while the correlation between votes for the KMT and national identity (or rather, a lack of consistency in national identity) are not as clear, because of the diversity in national identity among its supporters—which is also a challenge the KMT now faces in trying to redefine itself to supporters who have widely varied identifications, or who might simply be voting for the KMT in opposition to the DPP for other reasons other than identity.
Indeed, “this is the worst of times for the KMT,” lawmaker Johnny Chiang 江啟臣 declared while throwing his hat into the ring to run for the KMT’s chairpersonship. The KMT’s inability to make a breakthrough at this last presidential election is finally forcing it to reflect on its position, when it is clear that while trying to appeal to its older population base based on the sentimental value of the ROC, it is losing a large swath of the population who identify with Taiwan.
Hsiao Ching-yan 蕭敬嚴, director of the KMT’s Organizational Development Committee Youth Department, rightfully pointed out that the KMT’s loss was due to “the party’s stance toward China and its decaying image.” Allen Tien 田方倫, chairman of the KMT Youth League, also said mockingly that “the KMT is holding on hard to the ‘1992 consensus’ as if it were as precious as an ancestral tablet,” and that it needs to develop a cross-strait policy that is “in step with public opinion.”
But the KMT has also taken to blaming the CCP for its problems. Former president Ma Ying-jeou 馬英九 of the KMT even lamented: “I think the Mainland has to take certain responsibility for the misunderstanding [on the 1992 consensus], as it has placed too much emphasis on ‘one China’ and forgets there is the component ‘each side having its own interpretation.’”
The KMT claims a consensus was developed with the CCP in terms of the recognition of a ‘one China’ with each side having its own interpretation as to what it means, though CCP chairman Xi Jinping last year rubbished the idea of multiple interpretations and has laid claim to ‘one China’ as being the CCP’s interpretation. This was what former KMT vice-chairperson Hau Lung-bin 郝龍斌, who is also bidding to be the next KMT chairperson, said as well, that “the CCP refuses to acknowledge the existence of the ROC or the consensus’ perquisite of “one China, with each side having its own interpretation of what China means,” which means that, “there is no consensus between the KMT and the CCP.” He even claimed without basis that the DPP and the CCP “have collaborated to destroy” the ROC.
It is all very interesting to watch as the KMT panics in a desperate search to define its own identity. The problem, perhaps, is that the KMT for whatever reason still believes it needs to listen to the dictate of the CCP. Former president Ma even said that, no matter what new cross-strait policy the KMT develops, the CCP has to agree to it. One wonders how the KMT can be so tone-deaf to the fact that voters swung away from it during 2016’s presidential election due to it leaning too close with the CCP after the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement it wanted to sign with China saw the rise of the Sunflower Student Movement and more than 500,000 people taking to the streets to protest; and after Xi Jinping’s threat in his 2019’s new year speech that he would not rule out the use of force to subsume Taiwan under CCP’s rule, which eventually resulted in Taiwanese rallying together to reject the KMT in 2020 (and thereby the CCP), which again is seen as too brazenly close to the CCP. While Xi ate a serving of humble pie and made no remarks about Taiwan in his 2020 new year speech, the KMT at large has made no similar reflections that we know of.
It is apparent that while Taiwanese are moving ahead and newer parties are also evolving in their positions to respond to the demands of the electorate, the KMT has still not realized that its role as a political party is to listen to the electorate – the Taiwanese. It somehow believes that the CCP’s wishes are more important than the Taiwanese, when the CCP and Xi do not have a right to vote in Taiwan’s elections, no matter how much they claim Taiwan to be theirs—clearly, it is not. Perhaps it is better for the KMT to continue to be on their misguided path, so that they can be rendered into oblivion, and so that Taiwan can move ahead without the KMT trying to sabotage Taiwan’s attempts to forge its own road ahead. And perhaps it might do well for the CCP to recognize that the only way it can “unify” with Taiwan is if it becomes more like Taiwan.
The more interesting developments are the legislative election, however, as they will signal the way Taiwan’s politics will transform. First, younger voters have a preference for up and coming smaller parties. A study conducted by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation found that 28.4% of Taiwanese youths aged 20 to 24 said they voted for the New Power Party (NPP), while 22.9% said they voted for the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) set up by Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je 柯文哲. Notably, on the eastern coast of Taiwan’s mainland where voter turnout was low for the presidential election, the NPP and TPP were able to make relative inroads for the legislative election. And while the south is seen as a DPP stronghold, the Taiwan Statebuilding Party has made gains in Kaohsiung.
While the DPP has seen significant increases in its presidential votes in the north, Ko’s TPP has also gained influence while riding on the coattails of his mayorship, and both it and the NPP have also established themselves in Hsinchu City. It is believed that Ko might try for a run for president at 2024’s election, and NPP legislator Huang Kuo-chang 黃國昌 might use the results to springboard his own political ambitions, perhaps by running for mayor of Taipei and eventually for the presidency. Taiwanese identification with both the DPP and KMT currently hovers around only 20% to 30% for each, and the younger generation in Taiwan seem more in favor of alternative parties growing to break the two-party dominance, and to move beyond the Taiwanese-Chinese dichotomy that has trapped Taiwan’s politics, at least at the presidency level—a mock vote held prior to this year’s election also showed this, where among 11,369 senior-high, vocational-high and university students, 26.86% of them voted for the NPP, while 25.78% voted for the DPP and 24.21% voted for the Statebuilding Party. The TPP got 11.87% of the votes, about similar to how Taiwanese as a whole voted at this year’s legislative election.
To that extent, Ko and Huang might both see a breakthrough, assuming their support among Taiwanese will reach the necessary threshold in upcoming elections, and with the NPP having won seats in consecutive legislative elections as well as improved on their vote share for the legislator-at-large election from 6.11% in 2016 to 7.75% in 2020, and the TPP achieving more than 10% in its first run for the at-large legislator seats this year, Taiwan’s democratic development in the next phase will be exciting to watch, on how it would break the two-party impasse. The only caveat is that with the TPP’s value positioning unclear and seemingly aligned to the KMT (Ko has suggested forming an opposition alliance with the KMT, although he’s been careful not to cast his party as a “pan-Blue” KMT ally), a TPP presidency might not have the effect of protecting the Taiwanese identity, and if so, would be rejected by the majority of Taiwanese.
(Cover photo via Taiwan Presidential Office, CC BY 2.0)
