Despite the pan-blue camp's edge in most public opinion polls, the presidential election is "too close to call," and will hinge on the late decisions of a large number of undecided voters, a leading US scholar of Taiwan affairs said Monday in Washington.
And while the mudslinging will likely hurt voter turnout, it is still hard to say which side will be hurt more by that in the polls, Shelley Rigger, a professor at Davidson College, told a panel discussion hosted by leading Washington think tanks on the election.
While the Lien-Soong ticket has outperformed the DPP by 3 to 10 percentage points in recent polls, some 20 percent of the electorate is still undecided, "so there's a real possibility of a surprising result," said Rigger, who just returned from a trip to Taiwan, where she quizzed academics and observers on the outlook for the election.
"If I were the campaign manager for the pan-blue ticket, I would not be comfortable" with those polls, she told the Taipei Times. "But I would be more uncomfortable if I were the campaign manager for the green ticket. That's not a kind of lead that one sleeps well with."
The low turnout could be the main wild card, she indicated.
"There's a lot of frustration, disappointment and general disgust with the state of political plans that may cause voters to stay away from the polls," she said.
The mudslinging "may cause many people to say, I don't like any of these guys. I'm just not going to vote," she said.
Who would be hurt the most?
"Hard to say. On the one hand, DPP faithfuls are likely to turn out no matter what. On the other hand, the KMT is pretty skillful at using `incentives' to get voters to turn out, and also at using local networks and local factions, and may be able to mobilize the turnout."
Rigger specifically cited recent open letters run as newspaper advertisements condemning the dirty campaigning by both sides and bemoaning the failure to address meaningful issues. The letters were signed by a number of prominent academics and other political thinkers and leaders. She pointed out that one of the prominent signers was Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (
"When [such a criticism] comes from somebody who gave a high profile endorsement of Chen the last time around, it has to be interpreted to some extent as a retreat or a withdrawal from that stance," she said.
"So that indicates that people who wanted to give Chen the benefit of the doubt are now trying to signal some disappointment and disaffection with the president."
She said it indicates that some people who endorsed Chen in 2000 are "signaling to the electorate that they are un-endorsing him."
Rigger said the US role in the election will be "extremely large," but criticized the Bush administration for sending confusing messages to Taiwan, especially when President George W. Bush publicly slammed Chen's referendum plan after a White House meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (
Washington's message has been received in Taiwan "in a way that leaves people open to a mixed message interpretation."
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