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Presidential election 2008: Winning Ticket: Pan-blue supporters ecstatic after resounding victory

Rain failed to dampen the enthusiasm of the ebullient crowd that gathered in front of the campaign headquarters of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) last night. Ma's supporters went wild as the election results trickled in and it became increasingly clear that their candidate was not just going to win, but would land a resounding victory.

Vendors selling election paraphernalia such as plastic dolls of Ma and airhorns did a roaring trade while dodging police along Taipei's Zhonghua Road, where the headquarters of the Ma campaign is located.

It was hard to mistake 49-year-old Hsu Hsih-min (許思敏) as anyone but a die-hard Ma supporter. Turning up outside Ma's campaign headquarters to view election results with fellow KMT supporters, Hsu had a sparkly number "9" pasted to her forehead, a reference to Ma's Chinese name, which contains the character meaning "nine."

By 5pm Ma was already leading by half a million votes.

The excited crowd, sensing that Ma was going to beat expectations by a large margin, started chanting "2 million, 2 million" at 5:30pm.

When Ma's lead increased to more than 2 million votes, the blast of noise issued collectively by the crowd, mostly from airhorns, was deafening.

The crowd soon filled the fenced-off section in front of the campaign headquarters where a parade of KMT politicians pumped up the crowd from a stage.

People overflowed out along Zhonghua Road and filled up the traffic islands at the intersection with Aiguo West Road.

Even Ma's die-hard supporters were surprised by the magnitude of the victory.

"I bleed blue," said Cheng Chang-jiang (程長江), a 43-year-old Taipei resident who was not only sporting Ma paraphernalia from head to toe but also held a large homemade sign to show his support.

Cheng didn't just think Ma would win, he put money on it.

"I made a NT$10,000 bet with my friend that Ma would win by at least 800,000 votes," Cheng said. "But I had no idea that he would win by this much."

"I wish I had made more bets," Cheng said, grinning from ear to ear.

While most voters who turned up at Ma's headquarters last night were Taipei City and Taipei County residents, Lee Wea-hua (李蔚華), a long-time resident of Houston, Texas, was also in the crowd.

"Voting is my patriotic duty," said Lee, who returns to Taiwan with his wife for every presidential election.

"We love our country and we always vote blue," Lee said.

Most members of the crowd were long-time KMT supporters like Lee and Cheng.

However, 53-year-old Chen Mei-tien said that she voted for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 2000.

"I voted for the DPP with high hopes back in 2000," Chen said. "But they didn't deliver and the time has come for power to change hands again. That's democracy."
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