The 3.69 million votes garnered by Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) in Jan. 13’s presidential election reflected the “distrust” felt by many young people toward the country’s two major parties, a Malaysian analyst said.
Tan Seng Keat (陳承傑), research manager at the Malaysia-based Merdeka Center for Opinion Research, said a key takeaway from the outcome of the presidential election was how many young voters supported Ko.
The election results showed that ballots cast by young Taiwanese voters had “flowed to” Ko, Tan said, adding that this signaled “the distrust felt by the young generation toward the two traditional big parties in Taiwan.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
On the other hand, the loss of youth support should raise the alarm for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), added Tan, who visited Taiwan for the presidential and legislative elections.
Ko received 3.69 million votes, 26.46 percent of the total, leaving him in third behind Vice President William Lai (賴清德) of the ruling DPP and New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) of the KMT.
Lau Chin Kok (劉振國), a senior member of the Malaysian Chinese Association, a Malaysian political party, made a similar observation after obervering Taiwanese at the polls.
For young people, the TPP has become an alternative to the other two parties because of its “more flexible” campaigning approach, Lau said, adding that the DPP and the KMT had not come up with fresh strategies to appeal to young voters and had relied on traditional methods.
Their comments reflected pre-election polling, which suggested that Ko’s approval rating among voters aged from 20 to 40 was significantly higher than that of Lai and Hou.
Beyond that three candidates naturally diluted each other’s vote count, Tunghai University political scientist Shen Yu-chung (沈有忠) said that Ko won the support of many younger voters who supported Tsai in 2020.
Lai received 5.58 million votes in the presidential election, leaving him well short of the 8.17 million received by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) four years ago.
National University of Singapore political scientist Ian Chong (莊嘉穎) said that the support garnered by the TPP was a reflection of “dissatisfaction with domestic issues,” such as low wages and high house prices, and “has little to do with the People’s Republic of China.”
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