President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) re-election team hopes to run an “innovative and united campaign” to communicate with young and first-time voters in the hopes of winning their support, spokesman Liao Tai-hsiang (廖泰翔) said on Saturday.
Young voters can access Tsai’s social media content through a variety of channels, including Facebook, Instagram, Line and YouTube, which her team hopes will make them feel that there is no gap in communications between the president and themselves, he said.
Tsai’s Line account allows followers to insert images of themselves into photographs of her and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative candidates, he said.
Photo: Chen Hsin-yi, Taipei Times
The campaign team aims to improve integration of its offline and online interactions with Tsai’s supporters to boost online support for her, an anonymous source said.
A recent “Social Media Night” the campaign organized was well-received by young attendees, and more such events are planned for next month and later to “turn online support into actual votes,” the source said.
Asked why Tsai appears to be polling higher among young voters than her Chinese Nationalist Party opponent, Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), a DPP member, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Han’s “China-friendly” cross-strait stance, his unwillingness to condemn Beijing’s “one country, two systems” policy and the KMT’s claims that the DPP is instilling fear in Taiwanese by evoking “dried mango strips” (芒果乾) — a play on words with the Chinese phrase “a sense of the nation’s impending doom” (亡國感) — are at odds with the views of young voters.
While Han has not kept his mayoral campaign promise to “make Kaohsiung rich” and is “running away” by seeking the presidency, Tsai’s positions on issues such as pension reform, transitional justice, marriage equality and national sovereignty “protect the rights and interests of young people,” and are reasons why she is leading in the polls, the DPP member said.
Han has “clearly become the butt of the joke for young people on the Internet,” they added.
The achievements of Tsai’s administration — including wage increases, tax reductions and childcare and housing subsidies — are “gradually coming to the surface,” Liao said.
Tsai’s administration will continue to pay attention to the issues faced by young people, such as employment and starting a family, and she would continue to seek to ease the pressure on the younger generation through her policies, he said.
Younger people support Tsai because of her “clear stance of insisting on Taiwan’s sovereignty,” he said.
In cross-strait relations, diplomacy, defense and other areas, Tsai’s performance has “met the young generation’s expectations about a national identity,” he added.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
Taiwan will now have four additional national holidays after the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment today, which also made Labor Day a national holiday for all sectors. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their majority in the Legislative Yuan to pass the amendment to the Act on Implementing Memorial Days and State Holidays (紀念日及節日實施辦法), which the parties jointly proposed, in its third and final reading today. The legislature passed the bill to amend the act, which is currently enforced administratively, raising it to the legal level. The new legislation recognizes Confucius’ birthday on Sept. 28, the
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas