When Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) was competing to win the party’s nomination for Taipei mayor, he pledged that he would resign as legislator, accept no other post and quit politics forever if he came in third in the election.
He was confident that he would not come in third in the Nov. 24 local elections and that confidence was not completely groundless.
Looking back at Taipei’s mayoral elections, the DPP suffered its greatest defeat in 2002, when its candidate Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) obtained 35.89 percent of the vote.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) suffered its biggest defeat in 2014, when its candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) only won 40.82 percent of the vote, the pan-blue camp’s basic supporter base in the city.
The KMT’s credibility is bankrupt, its assets have been frozen and its Taipei mayoral candidate, Ting Shou-chung (丁守中), failed to be elected in the latest legislative election. How will he defend the blue camp in Taipei? No matter how you slice it, Yao cannot come in third.
LAGGING SUPPORT
The odd thing is that Yao’s support is lagging far behind Ting and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲). However, opinion polls are one thing and election results are another, as the case of then-DPP candidate Yu Shyi-kun’s (游錫堃) bid for the New Taipei City mayorship in 2014 shows: He almost won, despite lagging behind in the polls.
The conclusion is that as long as the DPP and the KMT can hold on to their supporters, the independent Ko has no chance and Yao will not end up in third place.
SWING VOTERS
Why then is Ko maintaining his momentum? The reason is obvious: Ting and Yao are too weak, and the two parties are losing momentum, giving Ko a golden opportunity.
First there is the issue of middle-of-the-road voters. Their growing number can erode the KMT’s and DPP’s support bases and benefit Ko, who claims to be neither blue nor green.
As Ko has lost the DPP’s endorsement, attacking the pan-blue and pan-green camps and their ideologies are his best campaign strategy. Ko’s momentum is probably a result of his taking advantage of the increasing number of swing voters, rather than being a result of his charisma.
Swing voters have always existed and they can be manipulated, but why are there so many of them in this mayoral election? It is clearly not because of Ko’s skills.
As the DPP repeatedly distances itself from “green values” and no longer insists on “green ideals,” it is losing support as older generations are turning away from it and younger generations are left unimpressed.
Not even Ko’s statement that “the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are family” seems to have harmed his campaign, but it is not very strange that young voters who did not live through the painful authoritarian rule would move toward the middle.
CYBERARMY
Second, there is the issue of the mythical netizens. According to reliable sources, Ko has spent all of his campaign funds on building a cyberarmy.
Although the momentum of a cyberarmy could help boost his support rating, the question is whether that support could be converted to votes in an election. That is a point worth taking a closer look at as we move into this new era.
More seriously, Yao’s crisis today is President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) crisis tomorrow. The issue of whether the DPP will win the November elections depends on Tsai, not the voters.
Chin Heng-wei is a political commentator.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
US President Donald Trump’s seemingly throwaway “Taiwan is Taiwan” statement has been appearing in headlines all over the media. Although it appears to have been made in passing, the comment nevertheless reveals something about Trump’s views and his understanding of Taiwan’s situation. In line with the Taiwan Relations Act, the US and Taiwan enjoy unofficial, but close economic, cultural and national defense ties. They lack official diplomatic relations, but maintain a partnership based on shared democratic values and strategic alignment. Excluding China, Taiwan maintains a level of diplomatic relations, official or otherwise, with many nations worldwide. It can be said that
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made the astonishing assertion during an interview with Germany’s Deutsche Welle, published on Friday last week, that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a dictator. She also essentially absolved Putin of blame for initiating the war in Ukraine. Commentators have since listed the reasons that Cheng’s assertion was not only absurd, but bordered on dangerous. Her claim is certainly absurd to the extent that there is no need to discuss the substance of it: It would be far more useful to assess what drove her to make the point and stick so
The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget that it represents the ultimate trust in the system. Banknotes do not become obsolete, they do not crash, they cannot be frozen and they leave no record of transactions. They remain the cleanest means of exchange in a free society. In a fully digitized world, every purchase, donation and action leaves behind data.
RSS