TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — Sometimes numbers can paint unexpected pictures if you know where to look.
For example, about 30% of Taiwanese voters do not like either the Kuomintang (KMT) or the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Thirty-four of the 113 seats in the Legislative Yuan are voted according to proportional representation for every party that gets at least 5% of the vote. This gives a clear picture of what parties voters support, at least for the legislature.
In January, 70.74% of the voters opted for the DPP or KMT, so just shy of 30% opted for other parties. In 2020, the combined KMT and DPP voter share was 67.34%, while in 2016 it was 70.97%.
In theory, this 30% could be a coincidence, and if this were just two elections in a row that would need to be the assumption. Three in a row with such strikingly similar numbers is a different matter, because it may be indicative of a pattern.
Intriguingly, from 2008 when the current legislative system was enacted through the 2016 election, support for the two big parties slid, then has been holding steady at around 70%. In 2008, faith in the two big parties was much higher at 88.14% and slid to 79.17% in 2012.
The 30% of the vote that goes to parties other than the DPP and KMT would translate into ten seats if one party could capture that entire amount, but no party has managed to do that and in the last three elections exactly eight seats have gone to third parties. Interestingly, which parties this non-KMT and DPP duopoly benefits do not necessarily come from the same side of the political spectrum.
In 2016, the New Power Party (NPP), which holds views closer to the pan-green side won five seats, while the pan-blue People’s First Party (PFP) won three. In 2020, the NPP returned with three, while the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), which leans blue more often than not, won five. This year, the TPP did an excellent job of consolidating the non-duopoly vote and won eight.
That consolidation is noteworthy and this year 6.97% voted for the 13 parties that failed to meet the 5% threshold, or just shy of a million people. That is far down from the 16.41% that voted for 14 failed parties in 2016 and the 13.68% that did so in 2020 for 15 parties.
Initially when the election results came in I was a bit surprised to see that the TPP’s presidential candidate Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) vote tally at 26.46% and the TPP party vote for the legislature at 22.07% were so far apart because I had expected them to be roughly the same. Now, looking at the numbers it makes perfect sense.
The presidential race only had three options, so it is very possible that the 2.39% he got personally came from the 6.97% that voted for parties that failed to meet the 5% threshold. Another possibility is that he got votes from KMT party supporters, which came in at 1.09% higher than for their presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜). There are elements in the KMT’s base that did not like Hou and may have opted for Ko in protest.
TPP implications
If this 30% pattern were to continue into 2028, and we should be cautious as there is no guarantee that it will, there could be implications for the TPP or other third parties that may make a splash by then.
The most important implication is it could mean there is a ceiling that will be very hard to break through for non-duopoly parties, and at 30% it is a bit smaller than the number of voters who will stick to each of the two main parties. Worse for a third party, achieving that 30% may be near impossible once the voters for all the other small parties that fail to make the 5% threshold are taken into account.
This suggests that by gaining over 22% of the party vote, the TPP may have done about as well as third party can reach by appealing to voters that do not like either the KMT or DPP, assuming the pattern of the last three elections continues. To grow any bigger, the party will need to provide voters with reasons to vote for TPP beyond just disliking the DPP and KMT.
In other words, the TPP may have run about as far as it can go as simply not being the other two parties. To change the situation the TPP will have to create their own partisan loyalists to their ideology.
For the TPP this is easier said than done because up until now they have not put forth anything ideologically coherent to set itself apart that inspires any sort of passion. Campaigning on being “practical,” “pragmatic” and “scientific” sounds great, but is not a coherent political ideology, nor have they proposed much that is significantly more representative of those ideals than the other parties.
Gaining a partisan loyalist base means taking clear stands on important issues, and in Taiwan that must include stances on sovereignty and relations with China. In the last election, the TPP’s positions were a weak version of the KMT’s, a vague mix of hoping for dialogue and better relations, but in the TPP’s case minus the “1992 consensus.”
The third party that probably got closest to achieving this was the New Power Party (NPP), which had clear stances on sovereignty and China that put them in the pan-green camp, but separated themselves from the DPP by taking significantly stronger left-of-center and socially liberal stances. Eventually, though, corruption scandals and infighting destroyed the idealistic image of the party.
Ko appears to be aware that the TPP has a problem. In his plan for the party going forward, he has been cited as explaining that he knew the percentage of people who do not like the blues and greens is currently high.
He went on to add that some people do not like the blues and greens, so they vote TPP, but that it was hoped that a foundation can be established that one day voting TPP is because they like you, and to move slowly away from negative campaigning toward positive campaigning.
Food for thought
This 30% pattern also raises some interesting questions about Taiwan politics. For example, why did support for the duopoly drop so significantly from 2008, and then settle at this point?
One possibility is that in 2008 Taiwan was still a younger democracy and more trusting of their parties at the time, then grew more cynical but then settled at an equilibrium between partisans and non-partisans starting in 2016. A potential counterargument is that the rise in popularity of the New Party in the 1990s and the People’s First Party in the early 2000s suggests that there has been a market for an alternative to the duopoly that predates 2008 when the new electoral system for the legislature was introduced.
Another possibility is that in 2008 the battlelines between the DPP and KMT were more sharply defined but have softened somewhat since Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took over the DPP as she took a less blunt approach than Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). It could be some combination of factors as well.
Another important question is whether this 30% represents a long-term equilibrium in Taiwan politics based on a cultural ratio among the populace, or just a particular period in Taiwan’s political history. And if it does change, what will cause that and why?
An interesting implication of three elections in a row with a stable 30% dissatisfied with the two major parties is that Chinese attempts at election interference have not had any significant effect. However, armed with advanced AI and deepfake technology, could that change?
Will the TPP or another party arise that can grow beyond that ceiling by attracting a partisan loyalist base? What sorts of ideological differences and similarities would such a party need?
If this 30% is indeed a pattern it answers some interesting questions, but raises yet more. It is food for thought.
