The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will have to secure 700,000 votes more than the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the south to win the presidential election next month, a senior aide in the DPP’s campaign team said.
The forecast reflected the nation’s basic electoral map, in which the DPP is dominant in the south and the KMT controls the north and east. Central Taiwan is a toss-up, said the aide, who wished to remain anonymous.
If DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) fails to win by more than 700,000 votes in the counties south of Yunlin — Yunlin, Chiayi and Pingtung counties, Greater Tainan and Greater Kaohsiung — “we are toast,” the aide said.
Photo: CNA
For the DPP, the outcome of the election comes down to whether the party can make up a losing margin in the north with its advantage in the south, “then we’ll try to do as well as we can in central Taiwan,” the aide said.
Further breaking down the Tsai campaign’s minimum goals in the south, the aide said the party would like to win Yunlin County by 90,000 votes, Chiayi and Pingting counties by 80,000, Greater Tainan by 210,000 and Greater Kaohsiung by 200,000.
The so-called “blue north and green south” phenomenon has seen both major political parties adopt almost the same philosophy by trying to increase their lead in their strongholds while losing less votes in regions where they have fewer supporters, the aide said.
Campaigning for Tsai yesterday at a rally in Chiayi, DPP Legislator Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) said that the election is a north-south battle and supporters have to “help the DPP win big in the south to make up for its losses in the north.”
The DPP hopes that it will at least do better than it did in last year’s mayoral elections, when Tsai lost in New Taipei City (新北市) by about 100,000 votes and former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) lost in Taipei by 170,000 votes.
“Our intelligence shows that the KMT has set an ambitious goal to beat us in Taipei and New Taipei City by 500,000 votes,” the aide said.
In terms of central Taiwan, which is expected to be the key battleground of the election, Tsai’s goal has been modest — she would like to break even in the region formerly known as Taichung City and to poll slightly better than the KMT in the region formerly known as Taichung County and in Changhua County.
The DPP expects to lose in the mountainous county of Nantou, the birthplace of Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) — President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) running mate.
“However, the losing margin could be small because Wu is not as popular in Nantou as some people think,” the aide said.
It will be very difficult for Tsai to win the Hakka constituencies of Miaoli, Hsinchu and Taoyuan, traditional strongholds of the KMT, the aide said, but the DPP has made headway in those regions and it will definitely fare much better than four years ago.
Among the Hakka-populated counties, Taoyuan is a “wild card,” where neither the DPP nor the KMT can predict voting behavior because of People First Party Chairman James Soong’s (宋楚瑜) late entry as the third candidate.
The aide estimated that Soong, who is expected to make the election more complex in Hakka and Aboriginal constituencies, would be able to win as many as 600,000 votes.
Barring the impact of KMT vote buying, the aide said he was “very optimistic” about Tsai’s chances in the election.
However, “the KMT will certainly leverage its party assets and place a lot of ‘resources’ in local districts,” the aide said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday voiced dissatisfaction with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans- Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), whose latest meeting, concluded earlier the same day, appeared not to address the country’s application. In a statement, MOFA said the CPTPP commission had "once again failed to fairly process Taiwan’s application," attributing the inaction to the bloc’s "succumbing to political pressure," without elaborating. Taiwan submitted its CPTPP application under the name "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu" on Sept. 22, 2021 -- less than a week after China
THE GOOD WORD: More than 100 colleges on both sides of the Pacific will work together to bring students to Taiwan so they can learn Mandarin where it is spoken A total of 102 universities from Taiwan and the US are collaborating in a push to promote Taiwan as the first-choice place to learn Mandarin, with seven Mandarin learning centers stood up in the US to train and support teachers, the Foundation for International Cooperation in Higher Education of Taiwan (FICHET) said. At the annual convention of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages held over the weekend in New Orleans, Louisiana, a Taiwan Pavilion was jointly run by 17 representative teams from the FICHET, the Overseas Community Affairs Council, the Steering Committee for the Test of Proficiency-Huayu, the
A home-style restaurant opened by a Taiwanese woman in Quezon City in Metro Manila has been featured in the first-ever Michelin Guide honoring exceptional restaurants in the Philippines. The restaurant, Fong Wei Wu (豐味屋), was one of 74 eateries to receive a “Michelin Selected” honor in the guide, while one restaurant received two Michelin stars, eight received one star and 25 were awarded a “Bib Gourmand.” The guide, which was limited to restaurants in Metro Manila and Cebu, was published on Oct. 30. In an interview, Feng Wei Wu’s owner and chef, Linda, said that as a restaurateur in her 60s, receiving an
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) on Monday announced light shows and themed traffic lights to welcome fans of South Korean pop group Twice to the port city. The group is to play Kaohsiung on Saturday as part of its “This Is For” world tour. It would be the group’s first performance in Taiwan since its debut 10 years ago. The all-female group consists of five South Koreans, three Japanese and Tainan’s Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), the first Taiwan-born and raised member of a South Korean girl group. To promote the group’s arrival, the city has been holding a series of events, including a pop-up
RSS