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Southern strength saved Chen, elsewhere Soong had the edge

According to the internal polling of the three election campaign camps, as many as one-fourth of Taiwan's voters remained undecided twenty-four hours before the polls opened on Saturday. Clearly, these undecided voters flowed overwhelmingly to Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and to James Soong (宋楚瑜), giving few votes to Lien Chan (連戰).

It also appears that some Lien voters decided to "dump" the KMT candidate to "save" Chen Shui-bian or James Soong, depending on their preference.

The combination of Chen's momentum in the final week of campaigning and the "dump-save" effect contributed much to Chen's victory.

With both Chen and Soong declaring the need to reform the political system and especially the KMT, president-elect Chen has a solid mandate from nearly three quarters of the electorate to take an ax to the old KMT party-state. This will facilitate Taiwan's urgent need to eradicate the power of the "black" mafia and remove "gold" corporate leaders from their key influential positions in the political system.. In a closely related issue, president-elect Chen should take no tome in repairing relations with the Soong camp in order to build a powerful consensus for dismantling the corporate holdings of the KMT. Some of these properties properly belong to the state. Strong forces must be mustered to force the implementation of Lien Chan's virtually forgotten campaign promise of putting KMT properties into trust.

The election results demonstrate that the candidates all depended upon rather different vote banks. Only Lien, who received from just over 21 percent to just under 25 percent of the vote in each region had reasonably even support throughout the country.

As expected, Chen Shui-bian's main support came from the eight counties and municipalities of southern Taiwan where he received almost 48 percent of the vote. He received no less than 45 percent of the support in each southern county and municipality and a landslide 54 per cent in his native Tainan county. This strength in southern Taiwan was critical to Chen's victory; southern Taiwan accounts for over 32 percent of the electorate. Chen led the south by 848,031 votes, a vital lead considering his victory over Soong overall was by only 312,805 votes.

Excluding the south, Soong led Chen by 535,226 votes in the remaining areas of the country.

The second major concentration of votes, north Taiwan, also with 32 percent of the electorate, was, as expected much more closely fought. Soong received 40.0 percent of the vote to Chen's 37.4 percent. Soong's strength here was a result of the large number of voters of mainlander origin in this area.

Soong was especially strong in three regions. In the Taoyuan-Hsinchu-Miaoli region he took, overall, some 45.9 percent of the vote.

This region has a large concentration of mainlanders, especially ex-servicemen and their families, as well as Hakka voters.

Whilst Hakka are often thought of as Taiwanese, many of them feel that the DPP has been a party for the Hokkien-speaking majority, to the exclusion of Hakka interests.

The defection of Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良), a prominent Hakka member of the DPP, to run as an independent candidate for president, further reduced the DPP's ability to win Hakka votes.

Soong also won 56.4 per cent of the vote in the east Taiwan region which has disproportionately large numbers of both mainlanders and Aborigines.

He gained considerable support among Taiwan's Aborigine population when he served as provincial governor.

Soong also won 55.3 percent of the vote in the outlying islands. Here again, military communities account for a large proportion of the electorate. Interestingly, while the whole country had a voter turnout of over 82 percent, less than 70 percent of the voters on the outlying islands went to the polls.

The final region, central Taiwan, which with 19 percent of the electorate is the third largest region, was much more closely fought than expected. Soong, with 38.6 percent of the vote narrowly led Chen, who had 37.4 percent.

Most analysts felt Soong would do particularly well in this region closest to the capital of the provincial government and which was badly damaged by the earthquake on Sept. 21 last year.

It is not surprising that Soong did very well in Nantou County, where the seat of the provincial government was situated, with 47 percent of the vote.

The high level of support which Soong received without party backing raises some concerns for the future of Taiwan's politics.

First, Soong gained considerable local support throughout the island owing to his willingness to spend huge Taiwan provincial government sums on local construction works when he was provincial governor. Hopefully, this experience of "pork barrel" politics will prove episodic rather than become a permanent feature of Taiwan politics.

The other worrying feature of Soong's candidacy was the willingness of his supporters to admit that he illegally pocketed KMT funds (A錢), but excused it by saying it was much less than that pocketed by county and township executives.

Such widespread attitudes in the electorate will make Chen Shui-bian's task of implementing reform much more difficult.

Professor Bruce Jacobs (家博) is Director of the Centre of East Asian Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is a special presidential election analyst for the Taipei Times.

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