President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) support ratings fell through the floor in last year’s local elections, but they bounced back in just a few months to put her in the lead again. This is unprecedented in Taiwan.
Most people say it was a result of the protests in Hong Kong, which the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has used to accuse the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of creating “a sense of the nation’s impending doom.”
The Hong Kong protests have helped the DPP campaign gain momentum, but they were not enough on their own to turn the situation around. Hong Kong’s problems are nothing new; there had been other protest movements, and the DPP has long warned that today’s Hong Kong could be tomorrow’s Taiwan, without seeing any positive effects on its campaigning.
In other words, Hong Kong is not the main reason that the DPP has gained momentum — other factors have also played part.
One important factor is the “Internet army.” Both major parties have such “armies,” but the DPP’s is stronger. The DPP’s main focus is the country, while the KMT’s is political ideology. Today’s young people have strong national awareness, but lack political ideology, so many of them lean toward the DPP.
Another even more important factor behind the DPP’s improved fortunes is that it has developed a better understanding of opinion polls. When Tsai took over the presidency, the main policies she proposed were in line with opinion poll results.
However, while US voters vote for policies they identify with — which means that if the government implements policies that most voters approve of, it will gain majority support — most Taiwanese only care about their own benefit and interests, and do not care much about public affairs.
This means that what they think about such policy would not influence how they vote, and only policies that directly affect their immediate interests would have an effect on how they vote.
The policies the Tsai administration introduced when it came to government were supported by a majority of voters. The administration thought that would translate into majority voter support. In practice, the opposite happened, as the policies did not have a direct effect on the people who supported them.
Instead, the policies had a negative effect on a minority of voters who, for that reason, opposed Tsai. In total, this meant that a lot of people opposed Tsai and her government, which was why her support rating fell through the floor. Following the local elections last year, the government finally understood this situation and changed tack.
The policies already put in place could not be changed, so instead a host of new policies were introduced. Each of these policies were beneficial to a small group of voters, but in the aggregate, they created strong majority support for Tsai.
Although most people did not agree with each individual policy, these policies did not have an immediate effect on their lives, and therefore did not matter to them.
There are basically two kinds of opinion polls: the ones concerned with individual politicians, and the ones concerned with policies. Polls concerned with politicians are often in step with election outcomes, while polls addressing policies often are not.
Since Taiwanese only care about their own direct interests and do not pay much attention to public affairs, only policies that affect voters directly would be reflected in election results. Alert politicians would not be confused by policy-oriented opinion poll results.
Chen Mao-hsiung, a retired National Sun Yat-sen University professor, is chairman of the Society for the Promotion of Taiwanese Security.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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
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.
The Honduran elections seem to have put China on defense. The promises of trade and aid have failed to materialize, industries are frustrated, and leading candidate Salvador Nasralla, who has increased his lead in the polls, has caused Beijing to engage in a surge of activity that appears more like damage control than partnership building. As Nasralla’s momentum has grown, China’s diplomacy, which seems to be dormant since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 2023, has shown several attempts to avoid a reversal if the Liberal or the National party — which also favor Taipei — emerge as winners in the
RSS