The DPP must rethink its strategy

The major defeat of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the presidential election has answered a long-standing controversial question within the party — are there swing voters and if so how many are there? Understanding the answer to this question is the key for the DPP to get back on its feet.

The presidential election was mainly a competition between the two candidates. Although both sides have their partisan supporters, in two-party political systems elections are decided by a candidate’s ability to attract voters without any clear party affiliation. In the 2004 presidential election, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) garnered over 50 percent of the vote, up from the 39 percent he received in 2000, which means that in the competition with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Lien Chan (連戰), Chen won 11 percent of voters who did not have an explicit inclination toward the DPP.

In last month’s presidential election, DPP Chairman Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) garnered only 41 percent of the vote, giving away much of the undetermined vote to the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). These nine to 11 percentage points of the vote were key to winning the presidential election. Ma, who has an image of being young, vibrant and free of corruption, is a much stronger candidate than Lien was, while Hsieh was weaker than Chen.

In every election, there is controversy within the DPP over this simple fact. Should the party move toward the center in order to canvass votes, or should it encourage grassroots supporters to come out and help influence the undecided voters? The former model is seen in stable democracies, while the latter occurs in nations that are halfway through a revolution but determine their government in democratic elections.

The DPP was originally a revolutionary party. Its early leaders and supporters had an almost religious sense of mission and wanted to spread their gospel to those who had not yet heard it. When the DPP was discussing the reasons it won the presidential election in 2004, it tended to believe it was the party’s launch of a “defensive referendum” that successfully highlighted the KMT’s conservative attitude toward referendums, thus influencing or “educating” swing voters, rather than the simple fact that Chen was younger and more charismatic than Lien and he represented new hope.

This way of thinking determined how Chen treated localization, cross-strait relations and Taiwan-US relations during his second term in office, as the DPP believed only an aggressive approach would secure votes. It also determined whether or not pan-blue supporters should be excluded from party primaries because the party believed swing voters could be convinced so the party did not need to become more centrist. It also determined who should represent the DPP in the presidential election — that is, who is the most pro-Taiwan — and finally it decided what issues Hsieh should bring up and what kind of voters he could attract in the presidential election.

However, these reasons were unacceptable to the young and the middle class in general. With a progressive Chen competing against a conservative Lien, the number of people voting for Chen was almost the same as the referendums. In this year’s election, however, Ma was not opposed to the referendums and the public understood clearly that the purpose of the DPP-initiated referendum was to copy the electoral strategy in 2004. The referendum was thus seen as an electoral ploy. Although Hsieh garnered approximately the same number of votes as the referendums, he won no support from other than existing DPP voters.

Past can become regression and an inability to change with the times will only result in ineffective appeals that only dumb people down while trying to influence them emotionally. But, now that Taiwan is overwhelmed with elections, the public no longer believe that democracy will regress 20 years just because the DPP is stepping down. Now that the former Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall is just a place to hang out, the public does not feel a name change has any particular historical meaning, it is just part of some kind of transitional justice.

By same token, the public does not believe that further expansion of cross-strait relations will turn Taiwan into another Tibet. Nobody believes that recognizing Chinese academic credentials — apart from making it more difficult for poorly performing universities to enroll students — will not mean that college graduates in Taiwan won’t be able to find a job. Opening up Taiwan to Chinese tourism will not lead to the situation the DPP described in its campaign advertising; Chinese tourists urinating in the streets. As long as customs do their job properly, poor quality Chinese products will not become a nightmare to Taiwanese households.

Chen, Hsieh and their generation have changed Taiwan and they achieved personal success. However, now that Taiwan has changed, they cannot expect that same political strategy will continue to win votes.

Hsieh an excellent job during his campaign, but he only made the best of a bad job with the DPP’s 20-year-old ideological ammunition.

If the DPP wants to continue to move forward, it will have to think outside the box and truly understand the needs of swing voters.

Liang Wen-chieh is former deputy director of the DPP’s Policy Research and Coordinating Committee.

Translated by Ted Yang