Written by Brian Hioe.
Image credit: 侯友宜/ Facebook.
Compared to the 2020 elections, it has often been remarked that the 2024 elections have been decidedly less competitive. Certainly, this does seem to be true, in that for most of the election cycle, DPP presidential candidate Lai Ching-te has been ahead. Nevertheless, what are the structural factors at work here, which differentiate the 2024 elections from the 2020 elections? We might take a look.
The implosion of Hou You-yi
One of the greatest surprises of the election cycle was the rapid implosion of KMT presidential candidate Hou You-yi’s campaign. Before the election cycle started in earnest, Hou You-yi was polling as one of Taiwan’s most popular politicians. Many polls suggested that he would be able to defeat Lai. Yet once the campaign cycle started in earnest, Hou rapidly declined in the polls. Why?
More attention has gone as of late to the televised spat between Hou, TPP presidential candidate Ko Wen-je, independent Terry Gou, former president Ma Ying-jeou, and KMT chair Eric Chu. But it is important to note that this was preceded by Chu’s attempt to block Hou from becoming presidential candidate through the KMT deciding its candidate through a closed nomination system rather than open primaries.
It is widely believed that Chu hoped to become the presidential candidate himself, in spite of the fact that polls showed that Hou would be the stronger candidate. Significantly, Gou’s feelings were bruised after he was rejected as the candidate, which was what pushed him to openly challenge the KMT as an independent.
As such, the split between Ko, Gou, and Hou originates because of this fateful choice by Chu. Chu’s attempt to run himself showed an individual pan-Blue politician putting his own interests above that of the pan-Blue camp as a whole. This is much as was also the case when Ko, Gou, and Hou all refused to withdraw to serve as the auxiliaries of any other candidate, even if polls suggested any alignment of Ko and Hou could beat Lai.
One explanation for the implosion of Hou’s campaign is that Hou continues to be distrusted within the KMT due to his benshengren background and historically moderate stances on cross-strait relations. To compensate for that, the KMT has now named hardliner Jaw Shaw-kong as his vice presidential candidate.
But Hou’s appeal was always based on his moderation relative to other KMT candidates, so this is unlikely to be an explanation. More probably, one notes that Hou’s appeal was based on his keeping his head down and focusing on local duties as New Taipei mayor during a preceding period in Taiwanese politics in which the public had tired of local politicians grandstanding on national issues–the same period that Taoyuan mayor Cheng Wen-tsan was highly popular for also focusing on local issues rather than focusing on national issues regarding China or otherwise.
Yet, as the presidential election cycle approaches, the mood may have shifted, with the public shifting preferences to leaders perceived as having grander visions for Taiwan. Indeed, a reason for Hou’s decline seems to be that he did not offer any grand vision of change and ran a campaign that tried too carefully to avoid any controversial issues.
No populist campaigning
Likewise, it has been noted that there was no corresponding phenomenon to the “Han wave” in the 2024 election. Certainly, some politicians have leaned into a populist style of campaigning in the present election cycle, including Terry Gou and Ko.
Ko arguably pioneered this style of campaigning in that his initial rise to power in 2014 was based on the claim to be a, frankly-speaking, unorthodox politician. However, it was Han who employed this style of politicking most effectively in past years. This can be seen that even after his defeat in the 2020 elections by large margins and his recall as mayor of Kaohsiung by even larger margins, he remains highly popular among some elements of the pan-Blue camp and continues to enjoy fervent support from deep Blues.
Terry Gou did not employ a populist style of campaigning when he previously sought the KMT’s presidential nomination in the lead-up to the 2020 elections. But he leaned into this heavily during the present election cycle, likely hoping to mimic the successes of Han Kuo-yu, making outlandish promises such as promising to fund the construction of 80,000 robots to defend Taiwan or suggesting that China could seize Foxconn if it left Taiwan alone.
Even so, the scale of populist campaigning was not on the level of 2020. And the limits of populist campaigning could perhaps be seen in the televised debacle that led to the implosion of the putative TPP-KMT alliance, in that the informal spats between the candidates spilt out into the public eye in a manner that ultimately reflected badly on all of them.
The China factor is missing
Nevertheless, differences between 2020 and 2024 do not stop only at the presidential candidates or the style of campaigning. It is also important to note that 2024 did not feature the presence of the “China factor” as strongly.
Certainly, the primary political issue in Taiwanese presidential elections historically has been and continues to be that of the “China factor.” But the “China factor” was not as present in the 2024 elections, and the DPP’s efforts to reframe the election around the China factor have not been as successful – if the DPP wins the presidential race, it is more likely to be through the systematic fractures and missteps of the pan-Blue camp rather than as a result of its campaign successes.
Indeed, though the China factor is always present, there was no parallel event to the 2019 Hong Kong protests to allow for these longstanding concerns about Taiwan’s relation to China to be repackaged into a compelling form for the 2024 elections. While the significant attention in Taiwan paid to the war in Ukraine after the Russian invasion also serves to repackage these concerns, the war broke out too long ago to have a direct impact on the election. Furthermore, Taiwanese reactions to the escalation of Chinese military exercises around Taiwan since the August 2022 visit to Taiwan by then-US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have not led to strong reactions in Taiwan, such as to directly sway the outcome of elections.
This is not to say that the Taiwanese have not become increasingly concerned about military threats from China in past years. But it must be kept in mind that Taiwan has faced threats from China for decades.
The public has likely become increasingly tired of when the DPP has leveraged the issue of cross-strait relations as a way to deflect from criticisms of its domestic politics in the past, which may make the issue of cross-strait relations less easy to leverage for the DPP than in the past. Indeed, even if Taiwan’s relationship with China continues to be the most salient issue for presidential elections, its binding power may decline as time goes on if the DPP is unable to synthesise its messaging on cross-strait relations with a compelling vision for domestic politics. This is why, in spite of rising identity trends and dissatisfaction with the KMT’s stances on China, this does not prevent votes for the KMT as a protest vote against the DPP. This, too, may reflect an important difference between 2020 and 2024, as the China factor comes to have less binding factor on Taiwan as time goes on.
But, in any free and fair election, the outcome will not be known until voting finishes. With less than fifty days until elections, even if the overall outlook seems to be clear, there is still plenty of room for surprises.
Brian Hioe is one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance journalist, as well as a translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University. He graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018 and is currently a non-resident fellow at the University of Nottingham’s Taiwan Studies Programme.
This article was published as part of a special issue on Presidential Candidates.
