A recent slate of opinion polls suggests the presidential campaign is likely to be a three-horse race. That is, unless Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) gets his way. The idea of an emerging third force in Taiwanese politics has been around since the founding of the New Power Party in 2015, but it has never seriously challenged the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) or the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
A Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation (TPOF) poll released on Friday last week showed that the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), founded in 2019 by former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), now commands an approval rating of 22.2 percent, surpassing the KMT’s 20.4 percent and not far behind the DPP’s 24.6 percent. This is the first time that three political parties have polled more than 20 percent, but the KMT has been looking over its shoulder for the past two years.
On Tuesday, the TPOF released another poll, this time on support for the three parties’ presidential nominees. That the KMT’s candidate, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), came third comes as no surprise; the shocker was that Ko was polling close to 30 percent, trailing Vice President William Lai (賴清德) by only 6.6 percentage points. A TVBS poll had different results, placing Ko first with 33 percent, ahead of Lai’s 30 percent. Hou dropped from first place in a previous TVBS poll to third, with 23 percent.
Although the TPOF and TVBS polls differ in their results, their findings do tell a similar story regarding one important metric: age group.
In TPOF’s results, Lai was more popular among prospective voters aged 45 or older. While Ko was ahead in the 35-44 and 45-54 age groups, his and Lai’s numbers were actually very close. Lai was significantly ahead in the 55-and-above group, while Ko secured 67 percent support in the 20-to-24 age group, leaving Lai and Hou trailing at 8.8 and 7.4 percent respectively. Hou fared poorly among all age groups except 55 and above, but in that category he only placed second. His 26 and 27 percent support in the 55-to-64 and 65-and-above groups does not offer much of a challenge to Lai’s 47 percent approval rating in both. Ko placed third in the 55-and-above group.
The TVBS results placed Ko first in the 20-to-29, 30-to-39 and 40-to-49 age groups, although his lead was significantly larger in the first two. In the third, he secured 36 percent compared with Lai’s 29 percent and Hou’s 23 percent.
TPOF’s polls also found that Ko’s support was the highest among university students, while Lai fared better among potential voters with a technical college, or high-school or lower education.
Jaw thinks he knows what the KMT should do about Hou’s dismal showing, based on a third poll, which was conducted by his own corporation together with Gallup. The poll found that if Lai and Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) ran on the same ticket they would win the presidential election against any KMT or TPP pairing in a three-way race. If Hou and Ko appeared on the same ticket, they would beat Lai and Hsiao by about 5 percentage points, but a significant portion of that support would come from the 20-to-29 age group.
Jaw’s conclusion is that the only way to beat Lai would be with a joint KMT-TPP ticket. An analysis of those figures by age group shows 58.92 percent support for the Hou-Ko ticket compared with 13.49 percent for the Lai-Hsiao pairing in the 20-to-29 age group. Unfortunately for Jaw, if the other two polls are accurate, that support is from Ko’s supporters, not Hou’s.
Ko has no reason to join forces with the KMT, especially if the latter expects him to stand as vice president. Meanwhile, Lai and his team need to study the implications of these poll findings.
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