The Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) vote allocation strategy will be exploited to its utmost in Tainan City, where the three DPP candidates together with the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) candidate have decided to share the pan-green vote.
Although a decision was made in late September for the DPP and TSU to wage a joint electoral campaign, this is the first time the DPP has also extended its vote allocation strategy to include a candidate from another party.
The vote allocation strategy is one of the key's to the DPP's legislative election campaign. It's a strategy born of Taiwan's "multi-member district, single vote" electoral system.
Under the strategy, the party determines in advance which voters will vote for which candidates, so that votes can be divided up equally. It gives instructions to its supporters, typically a week or two before the election, telling them to vote for a candidate according to a specified criteria -- for example, the supporter's birth month.
The strategy is meant to ensure that the party and its allies gain the maximum number of seats, and to avoid a scenario whereby the party's most popular candidate or candidates get far more votes than they need, while less-known candidates get too few to get elected.
In Tainan City, 12 candidates are running for the six seats. The three DPP candidates, Wang Sing-nan (
The four have already created a slogan, "all-season reds." That refers to having one candidate for each of the four seasons, with the lucky color red indicating they'll all win reelection. Though the allocation system has not been finalized in Tainan, it may see pan-green supporters casting ballots for a candidate based on which of the four seasons they were born in.
Lai said that the joint campaign was helping knit the pan-green camp more tightly together.
"The joint campaign has started to show its effect, and it has united the voters more," Lai said. "The voters have shown more confidence, and they have approved of this inter-party joint campaign."
Last week, after TSU chairman Huang Chu-wen (
But the DPP and the TSU do not necessarily get along in all constituencies.
In the Taipei City Second Constituency (Taipei City south), where DPP lawmaker Shen Fu-hsiung (
Also, the inclusion of the TSU's Chien Lin in the vote allocation system in Tainan City does not mean that the DPP is the one helping the TSU. Polls show that Chien Lin could likely hold her seat on her own, and even have votes to spare to give to the weaker DPP candidates.
One reason for that is that Chien Lin has performed better in the legislature than Wang and Tang, giving frequent press conferences to raise awareness of issues, mostly related to China or medicine.
The recent polls also show that while Lai, who plans to run for Tainan mayor next year, has a comfortable lead, Chien Lin enjoys roughly the same popularity as Wang, and Tang falls behind. Still, all four are expected to win reelection.
"The joint vote allocation idea was a DPP initiative, and they had been asking us [to join them] very eagerly. They invited us to join three or four times," Chien Lin said.
Lai also confirmed that the DPP took the initiative in the joint campaign. He publicized the idea as early as June, holding a press conference in Tainan calling for a joint DPP-TSU campaign.
The pan-green camp is expected to hold all its incumbent seats in Tainan City, with the two remaining seats likely filled by pan-blue and independent candidates.
The incumbents for those two seats are the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) Wang Yu-ting (
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