The Central Election Commission (CEC) announced last night that Chen Shui-bian (
According to official election results provided the CEC, the total number of valid ballots cast yesterday was 12,914,422. The Chen-Lu ticket won 6,471,970 votes, or 50.11 percent of total eligible votes, while the Lien-Soong ticket won 6,442,452 votes, or 49.89 percent of the total.
PHOTO: TANG PIN-CHAO. TAIPEI TIMES
Of the 16,504,179 eligible voters, 13,251,719 cast votes, a turnout of 80.288 percent. The number of invalid ballots was 337,297, or 2.5 percent of the total ballots cast.
"The Chen-Lu ticket has won the 11th Presidential, Vice-Presidential Election," CEC Chairman George Huang (
Chen's margin of victory, 30,598 votes, was much less than in the 2000 presidential election.
In that year Chen won 4,977,697 votes (39.30 percent) to Soong's 4,664,972 (36.84 percent) and Lien's 2,925,513 (23.10 percent).
The results indicate that the pan-blue camp's assumption that Lien and Soong together would win the same number of votes as they won as rivals four years ago was misplaced.
In this year's election, the northern region -- Taipei City, Taipei County, Keelung City, Ilan County, Taoyuan County, Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County -- the Lien-Soong ticket won 54.77 percent to Chen-Lu's 45.23 percent of valid votes.
In Taipei City, the Lien-Soong ticket won 56.53 percent to Chen and Lu's 43.47 percent.
"In the past four years, President Chen has been focusing on the development of all regions except Taipei, while during the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule, Taipei had been the focus of their administration. Therefore, it is not surprising that in this election, the pan-blue camp had a landslide victory in the Taipei regions," said Ku Chung-hwa (
In the Taipei City mayoral election in 2002, KMT candidate Ma Ying-jeou (
The DPP also seemed to make some progress in the Hakka majority areas of Hsinchu county and city, Taoyuan County and Miaoli County.
It has tried to court Hakka voters over the past four years by establishing a Hakka-language television station and reviving Hakka culture and language.
In the 2000 election, the DPP ticket won no more than 37 percent in any of these regions. The Chen-Lu ticket this time won nearly 45 percent in Taoyuan County and Hsinchu County.
The southern region again proved to be the stronghold of the pan-green camp. In Chiayi county and city, Tainan city and county and Kaohsiung City, the Chen-Lu ticket won more than 55 percent of the vote.
"Given the DPP's southern Taiwan grassroots strategy, it is no surprise that the southern region has been the DPP's stronghold," Ku said.
Nantou County, formerly home of the Taiwan Provincial Government and a stronghold of former governor Soong, also became more green.
In the previous presidential election, Soong, running as an independent, won 46.94 percent of total vote to Chen's 34.49 percent. This time, the pan-green camp won 48.75 percent of votes in the county to the pan-blue camp's 51.25 percent, despite criticism from the pan-blue camp of the DPP government's efforts to rebuild the county following the 921 earthquake in 1999.
"In the next four years, the DPP administration should put its emphasis on the reconciliation of different ethnic groups," Ku said.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
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