China Post By-Election Fun

China Post, the pro-KMT English paper, published a revealing piece on the by-election in Hualien this week. Commenting on the first policy presentations by Hsiao Bi-khim (DPP), Shih Sheng-lang (Independent), and Wang Ting-sheng (KMT), the paper observed:

The independent Shih Sheng-lang, who has close connections with Hualien Magistrate Fu Kun-chi, spoke in the Taiwanese dialect throughout his speech in a brute yet forceful manner. He criticized both the KMT and DPP for “lying” to the residents of Hualien for their own political gains and vowed to fight for an expressway linking Hualien and Suao if elected to the Legislature.

Wang of KMT, meanwhile, spoke in a more scholarly and academic style, saying he would not only fight for expressways linking Hualien to other parts of eastern Taiwan, but also create 3,000 jobs as well eliminate a medical co-payment for elderly citizens.

Note how the China Post describes Shih's "Taiwanese dialect" as "brute". The article is credited to "China Post staff" which means it is probably a translation from a Chinese original. You can thus see what kind of propaganda the locals are getting. Shih is an associate of Fu Kun-chi, the former KMTer who left the party when it wouldn't let him run for county chief, then handily crushed the KMT candidate. The Suhua expressway, a new highway through the mountains north of Hualien that environmentalists have long opposed, looks like it is DOA at the moment, with the central government saying it will merely upgrade the existing highway, and the Hualien county chief set against it.

Meanwhile check out the seriousness of the struggle for Hsinchu:

Ma, meanwhile, was not in holiday mode, either, and made a stop in Hualien yesterday.

He also put a heavy focus on Hsinchu County, spending time there on Feb. 12 and 15. He will visit again on Feb. 19 and 20, campaigning for KMT's Cheng Yung-tang, who is against DPP's Peng Shao-chin.

King Pu-tsung, KMT secretary general, meanwhile spent the last few days stumping for the party's candidates in Hualien as well as Chiayi County, traditionally a DPP stronghold.

Ma, currently the KMT chairman, sent himself out to Hsinchu to campaign in a race that most polls have the DPP candidate leading in -- and then sent his hatchet man to Chiayi, where the KMT can't win, and to Hualien, where it probably can't lose. It looks like a clear signal of what the KMT thinks about Hsinchu (it could lose!). Ma's job approval rating stands at 26 in the pro-KMT TVBS poll. Don't know if I'd want him out there campaigning for me, were I a KMT candidate.

Looking at all four Feb 27 elections (Hsinchu, Taoyuan, Hualien, and Chiayi), the latest TVBS polling indicates that the "certain to vote" section of the populace is rising by small amounts except in Hualien (where it has grown by 10% between polls), perhaps indicating higher turnout, which is likely to favor the KMT in Hualien and probably Hsinchu and Taoyuan as well. The TVBS poll of likely voters says:

Taoyuan (Feb 9 poll): KMT (36%), DPP (29%), Undecided (16%). Interestingly, when asked who they thought would win, as opposed to who they would vote for, voters picked the DPP over the KMT 33-26. Note large component of "no opinion" in the latter question.

Hsinchu (Jan 27): DPP (44%), KMT (34%), Undecided (22). Again, on the 26th voters were asked who would win and the DPP was ahead 39-24. Note large component of "no opinion" in the latter question.

Hualien (Feb 11): DPP and KMT neck and neck at 37% each, with only 13% undecided. When asked who would win, voters said the KMT, 36-20.

Three of the four seats, as the China Post article avers, are KMT strongholds. For the DPP to do well in these elections would be a big step forward.

In other election news, the lack of strong candidates for the KMT in the December elections for the Kaohsiung Municipality prompted some KMTers to put forward current legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng, who is originally from Kaohsiung, as a possibility. Wang says no way.
_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Glimpses of local Taiwan politics

With all the news about Big Government -- the cabinet reshuffle slated for next year, the Cross-Strait agreements slated to pass without real legislative oversight -- there's still plenty of stuff going on with Little Government that shows how KMT control of local faction networks and local agriculture and irrigation cooperatives translates into local political dominance.

According to a CNA report from a couple of days ago, the election of KMT legislator Chang Sho-wen from Yunlin was invalidated for vote-buying:

The Yunlin District Court said in its ruling that Chang Sho-wen was believed to be aware and have taken part in a well-planned and well-organized vote-buying scheme masterminded by his father Chang Hui-yuan, president of an influential local irrigation association.

Chang Hui-yuan was previously convicted of having colluded with the irrigation association's staff members and grassroots borough chiefs in the county to canvass votes for Chang Sho-wen by offering cash bribes to voters.

As the election bribery case involved many people and a large sum of money and covered a wide range of areas, including the county's major cities and townships, the court ruling said Chang Sho-wen was unlikely to be unaware of such activities as he claimed during the trial.

The verdict further said most of the defendants in the 14 Chang-related election bribery cases were convicted in the first trials.

Chang Hui-yuan himself was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison after being found guilty of election bribery. He has appealed the decision to the Taiwan High Court.

With so many people convicted in the case, the court contended that it was simply implausible that Chang Sho-wen, as a candidate, did not have any knowledge of such illegal practices.

Take a good look at how the apparatus of control is established. The irrigation cooperative with its lucrative construction work (even as far back as the 1980s more was being spent on irrigation and agricultural coop chief elections than on US senate elections) and other funding opportunities is the basis for a wide ranging vote buying scheme conducted by local borough chiefs, by which I believe the CNA means the neighborhood captains, the lin/li zhang. The KMT's long grip on the government means that 90% of the neighborhood captains are KMT, as are the agricultural and irrigation coop heads. These individuals, especially in rural areas, have excellent knowledge of local family and faction alignments and individual political preferences, and can easily apply vote buying cash where it is needed. Said cash coming from central government funds spun out to local governments and local institutions for construction, and somehow siphoned off. Observe also that this network extends across a wide geographical area; it's not a small operation, and it operates in an area conventionally considered 'Green'.

In sum, the long years of KMT party-state dominance mean that all across Taiwan, the local KMT party organization is essentially the local government.

Until the DPP spends the time and effort to put together a grass-roots party machine that contains sophisticated databases on local voters and voting patterns, coupled with an extensive and trained volunteer network, the party will remain little more than a cabal of lawyers intent on capturing the presidency.

Oh, and the conviction? It will have little practical effect since the appeals process is so drawn-out:

If, however, the court's final ruling is not handed down until early 2011, with less than a year left in Chang Sho-wen's four-year term, the seat would then be left vacant until the next legislative elections are held in late 2011 or early 2012.

A vote buying conviction will also mean little because (1) voters habitually send convicted vote buyers back to office and (2) even if Chang cannot run again, the faction will simply put another family member in his place for the next election.

[Taiwan]

Man of Many Letters

Before we get into the meat of this post, I'd like to direct everyone to this great Asian Studies Toolbar by John Noyce. It has links to Asian Studies stuff on the internet, media, journals, blogs, and a host of other stuff. Installs automatically, easy to use, and customizable.... and he has fantastic taste in Taiwan blogs.

When I was younger I aspired to be a man of letters, and now that I've reached that age where my waistline expands as my hairline recedes, I've reached that goal -- letters are my life. Today a response I made to a piece of Chinese propaganda in the Yale paper a few weeks ago made its way into a letter in the Taipei Times. Stuff that gets into any media, however semi-serious, needs to be responded to, because those responses reach people.

More fun with letters occurred a couple of weeks ago when Taipei-based David Pendery responded to my response to him. It's mostly evidence-free rambling:

Again, we can see his point, but in sum, what Turton implies is that Taiwanese voters concern themselves more about a plate of free beef noodles and a little questionable assistance with a legal problem than the education of their children, the state of their economy, the environment they live in, crime and public order, the cost of housing, infrastructure development, etc. Such a claim I will not abide by.

Ultimately, I would be more inclined to agree with Jerome Keating -- whatever his political view -- when he wrote that the KMT "is not monolithic. Contrasting viewpoints abound and power struggles continue beneath the surface."

Such a view undermines Turton's apocalyptic prediction of a "permanent majority."

In any event, I am not endorsing or criticizing any one party.

Rather, I am trying to point out that respect for the various viewpoints in this country, to say nothing of more empathetic, impartial and tolerant attitudes toward Taiwanese voters and their issues (yes, their issues) is necessary to make progress in this country.

As a matter of fact, the LDP wasn't a monolith either, but it did enjoy a 38 year grip on Japan. One quirk of this exchange: the letter he responded to was a truncated version of this longer piece which the Taipei Times had already published. The TT published two versions of the same letter!....what had happened was that I sent in the first piece but about 8 days went by and it wasn't published. I figured it was too long, so I lopped off the limbs and sent it back as a response to Pendery, and they ended up publishing both. My favorite part of Pendery's letter, unmarred by numbers or critical thought, is the part where he claims he isn't "criticizing any party." His original letter said:

Instead of apportioning blame and howling about the injustice of it all, the DPP and its supporters need to wake up to reality and rein in their worst instincts. The supercilious tone of the DPP's cheerleaders, their self-righteous declamations of exactly what anyone and everyone in Taiwan should and must think and do, and their routine denigration of one half or more of Taiwan's population have gotten utterly tiresome. These are all reasons, I think, that many people are in the process of drumming the DPP out of power.

LOL. Boy, it's a good thing Pendery isn't criticizing any one party, eh?

Finally, I also sent in a letter on the problem with the districting arrangements, which as I noted in my post on gerrymandering below, favored the KMT. It didn't make the Taipei Times' grade, so here it is, gratis:

++++++++
How the Districting Affected the Election

Although the conventional wisdom assigns the DPP defeat in the Jan 12 legislative election to the disatisfaction with Chen Shui-bian, and the "failing economy", the reality is that structural factors played a key role. Among these were the districting arrangements, which favored the KMT.

According to the law, districts must be drawn by population, and must follow city and county boundaries. These sensible, strict rules generally prevent the drawing of cross-district boundaries that result in the absurd districts so common in the US. Based on these, the Central Election Commission's original proposal alloted 8 districts to Taipei City, 12 to Taipei County, and 6 to Taoyuan. For Tainan city and county, just five districts were created.

To understand the effect of this on the vote, it is necessary to look at the voting population, not at the general population. In Tainan those five districts average 283,000 registered voters each (the national average is 230,000 voters); for Taoyuan, the same average is 225,000; for Taipei County, 235,000; for Taipei City; 251,000. Of the districts that CEC created by cutting up counties, 4 of the 5 largest by voting population are in Tainan. Using the Taoyuan average as a standard, the Tainan area should have had at least one more district. Using the Tainan average for the north, roughly speaking, Taoyuan has 1 extra seat, Taipei city 1 extra seat, and Taipei County 2 extra seats.[MT: the effect is even more pronounced because if you drop the five districts on the east coast and the islands, whose populations are unusually small, the average for the populated west coast and Ilan is about 240,000 voters per district. The average district size in both Taoyuan and Taipei County is smaller than that. Any way you measure it, it sure looks like somebody shoehorned in extra districts in the north.]

Of the ten largest districts (by voting population) created out of counties, seven are in the south: the five Tainan districts and the two in Yunlin County. There is no apparent reason for this (though of course the "right" size is debateable) -- Pingtung County, with a general population of 834,000 (631,000 voters), was chopped into three small districts, while Tainan county, with a general population of 1.1 million people (847,000 voters), was awarded three giant seats. Conversely, the CEC had no trouble creating districts in Taichung County, Pingtung, Kaohsiung City, Nantou, and Miaoli of under 200,000 voters -- a figure that would have awarded Tainan at least two more seats. In Kaohsiung, where the KMT has a powerful local presence, districts averaged only 229,000 voters each.

In sum, the CEC's original proposal created smaller districts in Blue areas and very large ones in Tainan, essentially denying more than 200,000 voters in Tainan representation that was granted to voters in other districts. Size matters greatly; the KMT won 18 of the 20 smallest districts. Had the election been more closely contested, the "extra" Blue seats would have had a strong impact.

Another effect of the districting plan is the large number of safe Blue seats. Counting the islands (3), the east coast (2), Keelung (1), Hsinchu County (1), Taichung County 2 (Yen Ching-piao), the North (26), and Blue-leaning Miaoli (2) and Nantou (2), and assuming a loss here and there, almost half the seats are safely Blue. The Blues need only win half the remainder to win an overwhelming legislative majority.
+++++++++

I deleted the remainder, mostly criticisms of the DPP's election planning.

[Taiwan]

Gerrymandering?

"The lumper/splitter problem occurs when there is the need to create classifications and assign examples to them....." -- Wiki

More gray, ugly, cold, rainy days courtesy of Taiwan in the winter, giving me plenty of incentive to sit in front of the computer, where there's a steady flow of both information and warm air.

The chart above ranks the legislative districts from most to least by number of registered voters. It is not finished because I lack data in many cases to make firm judgments about which way districts should have broken. Here are some things to keep in mind:

The CEC proposed the districts and the two parties negotiated; where they disagreed, the boundaries were selected by lot. By law, they must be drawn based on city and county boundaries -- but remember that the legislature can make and unmake the law.

Looking at the district sizes nothing really stands out at first glance; as I've observed, the effect of the districting is subtle. I have two figures up there as "average." The lower number is the mean size (total vote divided by 73 election districts), the higher number (average -4) is the average without the four smallest districts (divided by 69).

Feast your eyes on Taoyuan and Tainan first. In Taoyuan there are 6 districts, the largest of which is 232K voters. Note that the average number of voters per district for the entire nation was 230K; thus, all the Taoyuan seats are at or below that figure. In Tainan city and county there were five districts, the smallest of which was 273K voters. Thus, in Tainan, 1,419,374 registered voters shared 5 seats for 283,874 voters/seat, the same figure for Taoyuan was 225,039. Using the Taoyuan average for Tainan, one would predict 6.3 seats. Either Taoyuan has at least one seat too many, or Tainan one seat too few. Though faction riddled, Taoyuan is reliably Blue, just as Tainan is reliably Green.

Similarly, in Taipei City, 8 districts totaling 2,014,438 registered voters yields an average of 251,804 for each district. At that average Tainan gives 5.6 districts. Again, the largest Taipei City district (280K) is only slightly larger than the smallest Tainan district (273K).

Taipei County gives an average district size of 235,071 registered voters for 12 seats and a total of 2,820,852 voters. The effect is more striking here: using the Tainan district average of 283,874 voters, we get 9.9 seats. Again, the largest Taipei County district is 10K smaller than the smallest Tainan district.

Elsewhere in the south, in Kaohsiung city and county the similar average is 231,344 for each of 9 seats and 2,082,103 registered voters. At first glance that seems quite low, but recall that Kaohsiung, which has a largely Blue city council and is split quite close in the mayoral election, the five districts average only 229,256 voters each. Three of those districts went KMT, as did 3 of 4 county districts.

Pingtung County has three very small districts, of 202K, 209K, and 223K. The largest of these, District 1, was allegedly created, little birds have told me, to make a safe district for a non-aligned KMT ally, the only case where the borders were alleged to have been drawn to save a particular legislator. The DPP won there despite that, ironically. The other two districts were split.

By size, strikingly, all but two of the twenty smallest districts (by registered voters) went Blue. The DPP probably would have won Chiayi city as well, but split the "Green" vote with the TSU (the DPP candidate was also quite weak, I've heard). By the same token, of the 15 largest districts, 5 broke for the DPP; arguably I-lan, long a DPP stronghold, should have been a DPP capture as well.

The three largest districts -- Keelung was probably just a bit too small for two seats; Hsinchu County and I-lan arguably should have been split, since Nantou -- reasonably Blue -- was split to create two very small districts, including one of just 183K voters, as was Blue-leaning Miaoli (411K voters). Hsinchu County, based on the 2004 election, would have gone Blue. Using the "Nantou/Miaoli standard" Yunlin, with more than 700K voters, should obviously have been split into three seats (it has more voters than Pingtung with three seats), though it's anyone's guess how they would have turned out -- the two sides got roughly the same vote totals there in 2004.

Another way of looking at it is to examine the districts that were created by active decision-making. For example, Keelung, Hsinchu, and I-lan were not chopped up but left as single election districts. Looking at the largest districts created by conscious decision making, we have:

District...................Voters
Tainan City 1...........290415
Tainan County 3.....288704
Tainan County 2.....285274
Taichung City 2......282102
Tainan City 2..........281576

Four of the five largest created districts are in Tainan! Further, seven of the top ten biggest districts whose boundaries were drawn to cut up a county are located in the south: two in Yunlin -- and all five Tainan districts.

In sum, looking at Taipei city and county, and Taoyuan county, all reliably Blue for the most part, there are probably three-four seats that should not be there. On the flip, Tainan is certainly short at least one seat, and Yunlin should have had an additional seat as well. The total effect of districting choices appears to be at least four seats in favor of the KMT/Blues, perhaps as many as 6. Somebody in the DPP did not do their homework when these districts were laid out; as I am wont to say, the DPP has too many academics and scholars, and not enough machine politicians and voter mobilization geeks.

Thus, counting safe seats -- Keelung (1), Taichung County district 2 (Yen Ching-piao)(1), Nantou (2), Taoyuan (6), the islands (3), the east coast (2), Miaoli (2) -- yields 17 seats. Toss in Taipei City and County, with 20 seats in total, of which the KMT took 18, and the number of safe seats for the KMT is more or less half the legislature. If the KMT gets half the remaining seats, it reaches a 2/3 majority with no problem at all.

The DPP has its work cut out for it.

UPDATE: Yup. Someone can't count: Taoyuan was drawn up by the DPP, reported A-gu last year:

"As far as the 8 districts that hadn't been agreed on, Wang Jin-ping (KMT) and Su Chen-chang (DPP) yesterday came to an agreement by drawing straws. The result was that Taipei city, Miaoli county, Chuanghua county, and Taichung city were drawn in accordance with the CEC's original draft. Kaohsiung City was drawn according to a legislative concensus, Taipei county along the TSU's draft bill, Taoyuan County according to the DPP's draft, and Pingtung County according to the draft brought by the Nonpartisan Union/PFP/KMT/TSU."

I have no clue why the KMT objected to the Taoyuan plan; it is hugely favorable to it. Tainan and Yunlin were done by the CEC, AFAIK (final ratified proposal). If there is a next time, the DPP needs to sit down with a calculator.....

UPDATE II: The CEC's original proposal is here. The idea to cut the north into 26 smaller districts originated with the CEC:

肆、第7屆立法委員直轄市縣市選舉區應選名額，依上開劃分原則規定，以本（95）年1月31日各直轄市、縣市人口數（扣除原住民人口數），比例分配計算各直轄市、縣市應選名額為（詳如計算表）：
一、台北市8人。
二、高雄市5人。
三、台灣省：台北縣12人，宜蘭縣1人，桃園縣6人，新竹縣1人，苗栗縣2人，台中縣5人，彰化縣4人，南投縣2人，雲林縣2人，嘉義縣2人，台南縣3人，高雄縣4人，屏東縣3人，台東縣1人，花蓮縣1人，澎湖縣1人，基隆市1人，新竹市1人，台中市3人，嘉義市1人，台南市2人。
四、金門縣1人。
五、連江縣1人。

The DPP was not responsible for the number of districts in Taoyuan, that was the CEC. Idiotically, in 2006 the DPP rejected a proposal to increase the number of legislators to 164 and institute multi-member districts. Yet even Wang Jin-pyng, KMT legislative speaker, thought the legislature was too small. The DPP dug its own grave....

[Taiwan] [DPP] [KMT]

How Much Would the DPP Have Needed? One last look at the numbers..

I was riding home last night after Chaon & Co. creamed my son and I in Axis and Allies, and got to thinking about the legislative election again (imagine that, if you can!). This time I decided to figure out how many votes the DPP would have needed to make a substantial increase in the number of seats won.

Now, obviously, if the DPP total increases by 400,000, those votes won't be spread evenly throughout the island. The growth would be uneven. To weight the numbers, I assumed that any growth in the vote would reflect the extant situation in the district, and thus be proportional to it. For example, if a DPP candidate in District X received 10% of the entire DPP vote, then that same candidate would receive 10% of any increased vote. Naturally this is only a rough assumption, but it is a guide to what-might-have-been.

To do this I first downloaded the vote totals for each district from the CEC database. The overall constituent vote totals are here, with the DPP receiving 3,765,222 votes, and the KMT, 5,209,237. Those represent total votes for all candidates, not votes for the party. I then eliminated all other candidates, leaving only the KMT and the DPP, in most cases (in one or two cases there was no DPP candidate, or the DPP opponent was from the NPSU).

In the chart above, the first three columns are pretty self-explanatory. The fourth column represents the ratio of the DPP vote in that district to the entire DPP constituency vote. For example, in the first line, in Kaohsiung City 1, the DPP obtained 65,266 votes, representing .0173 of the entire DPP vote (1.73%). I took the first four digits, without rounding.

The next column contains two numbers. The first number is the difference between the KMT and DPP vote (KMT minus DPP). The second number is the size of the overall DPP vote increase necessary to generate enough votes in that district for the DPP candidate to overcome the KMT candidate. Again, in Kaohsiung City 1, the DPP candidate received 1.73% of the DPP vote. To generate enough votes to overcome a 27,151 vote deficit, the DPP would have had to poll another 1.6 million votes (1600000 x .0173 = 27,680). No doubt there are some errors, I probably should not be doing math after midnight with a couple of beers in me.

Of course, this also assumes that the KMT vote stays constant, which is obviously not the case. Had the DPP polled more voters, the KMT would have been out trying to stimulate even more people to come out. But I'm assuming away that effect, so we can try and get a glimpse of what-might-have-been.

For simplicity's sake, I incremented the vote totals by 100,000. I also did not look at areas where the DPP did not run a candidate, and I ignored Jinmen and Matsu since there is no way the DPP will ever win there. To understand this, looking at the first line, if the DPP picks up an additional 200,000 votes, it will pick up the seat in Kaohsiung County 4. If it increases 400,000 votes, it gains a total of three seats (Kaohsiung City 4, Kaohsiung County 4, and Taipei County 4).

200,000
Kaohsiung County 4

400,000
Kaohsiung City 4
Taipei County 4

500,000
Taipei County 5
Changhua County 4

600,000
Kaohsiung City 3
Taipei City 2
Ilan
Taichung County 1

700,000
Kaohsiung County 1
Chiayi City

900,000
Taoyuan County 2
Taichung County 3

1,100,000
Yunlin County 2
Penghu
Taichung City 3

1,200,000
Changhua County 3
Pingtung County 2

1,300,000
Taipei County 6
Taipei County 7
Yunlin County 1

1,400,000
Taipei County 1
Taichung County 5
Chiayi County 1

1,500,000
Miaoli County 1

1,600,000
Kaohsiung City 1
Taipei City 5
Nantou County 2

1,800,000
Taipei County 1

1,900,000
Taipei County 8

2,000,000
Taipei County 10

2,200,000
Taipei City 1
Taipei City 3
Taichung City 1

2,300,000
Hsinchu City
Taichung City 2

2,500,000
Changhua County 2

2,600,000
Taoyuan County 1
Taoyuan County 4

2,900,000
Taipei City 4
Taoyuan County 3

3,900,000
Taoyuan County 6

4,000,000
Taipei City 6
Taichung County 2
Nantou County 1

4,100,000
Taipei City 7
Taoyuan County 5

5,500,000
Taipei County 11

4,400,000
Changhua County 1

5,000,000
HUalien

5,300,000
Keelung

6,600,000
Taipei City 8

8,000,000
Miaoli County 2

Based on these figures, the DPP would have had to pick up another 700,000 votes or so to gain an additional ten seats and reach a total of 40 (with the proportional at-large seats). That would have meant a roughly 20% increase in the vote total, to 4.4 million DPP votes, a figure it has never gotten within shouting distance of. If the DPP had picked up another 1.6 million votes (to 5.3 million votes), a nearly 50% increase, then it would have picked up another 28 or 29 seats.

What was the effect of the TSU? In 2004 the TSU took 750,000 votes, this time around, according to the CEC, just 93,000 people voted for the TSU, concentrated in just three areas. The DPP was unable to grab the missing TSU voters (or perhaps it did and core DPP vote plummeted, without solid survey work, there's no way to know). Even worse, in one case, Chiayi City, the TSU candidate took 14,000 votes, while the DPP candidate lost by 7,000 (in no other district did I notice the TSU having a serious impact). It's often assumed that TSU voters would switch to the DPP in the absence of a TSU candidate, but recall that the TSU was brought out of the KMT by Lee Teng-hui, and some of those voters may have returned to their Blue roots this election. Others couldn't be bothered to come out (Lazy? Angered?). Clearly, the DPP's failure to smoothly absorb the TSU and collect all its votes, the way the KMT eliminated the PFP and incorporated all its voters, potentially cost the DPP. However, in 2004 the TSU took 756,000 votes (CEC), but the geographical distribution is telling: 390,491 of those votes were concentrated in Taipei City, Taipei County, Kaohsiung City, Kaohsiung County, and Taoyuan -- mostly places where the DPP was not competitive, or where it didn't need votes. On the other hand, the DPP lost both Yunlin seats by a total of 38,000 votes -- and the TSU had 33,000 votes there in 2004 (no votes in 2008).

RE the young: I just wrote this to a friend:

It's funny because I was pretty long-term optimistic too, but I made an error, the famous DUNE error -- remember, when Duke Leto errs in trusting, because he thought anyone who hated Harkonnens would never betray him? Heh. That's what I did. I assumed that the rising Taiwan identity among the young would make them shift to the DPP over time, but I suspect it has had the opposite effect -- because they are pro-Taiwan they feel safe voting for KMT candidates.

Enjoy. Discuss. Dissect.

UPDATE: The Taipei Times published my thumbnail analysis of the election.

[Taiwan] [DPP] [KMT]

One Last Election Analysis

This came with the latest Nelson Report: Shelly Rigger's observations on the recent LY election, mine in brackets.

+++++++++++++++++

A few quick observations in response to Kirk and Hans. There's no question that the new system really hurt the DPP in terms of seats, but to say that this doesn't matter, and they're still in okay shape overall, does not sound right to me. For these reasons:

[Yup. The DPP is in deep doo doo]

1. The DPP really didn't increase its vote share much at all. This election was similar to EVERY other election the DPP has competed in, save one (the presidential in 2004). They just can't seem to break that 40% barrier. The percentages go up and down marginally, but they are really stuck at about 40%. This makes 2004 look more and more like a fluke, and not an indicator of a trend.

[Yup. 2004 is an anomaly. And the DPP numbers are a structural feature.]

2. Eight years ago, when CSB got 39% of the vote, people were genuinely afraid to vote for the DPP -- many feared the PRC would do something extreme if Chen was elected. But the sky didn't fall after all, so voting for the DPP should be getting easier. But the party vote this time was not quite 37%. So given a chance to endorse the DPP, fewer people were willing to do it in 2008 than in 2000. This is really bad for the DPP: Despite their (and CSB's) frantic exertions over the past 7 years, they have made no progress in expanding their share of the electorate.

[Alas, Dr. Rigger is confused here. National and local elections cannot be compared -- in 2000 CSB garnered 4.97 million votes, in the recent LY election, the DPP got 3.6 million. Those were two very different levels of "40%"]

3. The DPP lost districts it shouldn't have lost. They were at or close to 50% of the vote in about 25 of the new districts in the past three elections; they should have won those under the new system, but they got only half of them (13). This is another very bad sign for the DPP. It's losing in places it should win. The same thing happened in the municipal elections in 2005. Also, where they did win the margins were narrow.

[It's not surprising, actually, that they lost in Kaohsiung. People think that the south is automatically DPP territory, but the Kaohsiung mayor and city council elections are always split.]

4. The DPP may not have lost a lot of votes, but the KMT gained a lot. They got 51% of the party vote -- that's the strongest endorsement they've had in years. The PFP is dead as a doornail, as is the New Party. Humpty Dumpty has been put back together again. Yes, there are cracks. Not everybody loves everybody. But compared to a year ago, the KMT is way, way stronger.

[The KMT did gain a lot -- by swallowing the PFP and gathering all the Blue votes unto itself, as I noted already.]

5. Although there are divisions in the KMT, the DPP is even more divided. The party primaries were extremely damaging, mainly because the other factions -- including Frank Hsieh's -- declared war on the New Tide faction. There was extreme ugliness -- eleven long-time party activists were declared "traitors" and "friends of China" -- and the victims blame Hsieh, among others. I am pretty convinced he's not going to win them back between now and March. I think calling them "pro-China" crossed a line. Without the enthusiastic support of New Tide activists, Hsieh is in trouble. It's true that they don't want Ma to win, but how hard are they going to work? Everyone is already exhausted ...

[Yup.]

6. The KMT is likely doing much better than the DPP is for funds -- and not because of party assets, which is really a red herring at this point. The KMT clearly was spending more in the LY campaign, and with the momentum in its direction, the money is going to pour in. The business community has to be able to taste victory at this point.

[Yup.]

7. The pitiful performance of the referendums suggest that voters know they're being gamed on that, and they don't want to play. The UN referendums might be different, but they very well might not. If the DPP referendum loses, that's another big setback. My conversations in Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung last week make me think there's a lot of panic around that possibility.

[The referendums will certainly lose.]

8. I see no reason to assume that any particular group of voters turned out at a low rate. What is the evidence that it was the "light greens" who didn't vote, and what is the evidence that they WILL turn out in March? The DPP is spinning it that way (there will be another 20% turnout, and it'll break our way), but I think that's pure wishful thinking. If Hans has evidence, I'd like to see it. I didn't see any, and the logic doesn't make much sense to me. Why would people be more excited about Hsieh than about their local legislative candidates? And why would KMT voters be MORE excited about legislative candidates than Ma? If anything, I'd guess the light blues didn't turn out. When they do, they're going to vote for Ma. And as for the local factions: They have to be thinking that if Ma wins, given the KMT's LY majority, trough will be overflowing with swill. If Ma loses, not so much.

[Exactly what I said. Can anyone name the evidence for who didn't turn out and who did? UPDATED: One thing Rigger is massively wrong here on is the legislative and national elections. "Why would people be more excited about Hsieh than their local legislative candidates?" The answer is that people are, as shown in the numbers, that DPP voters are far more willing to come out nationally than locally. Further, many who vote Blue locally vote Green nationally. Voters treat the elections as different.]

9. So, I'm not counting Hsieh out -- he does have one good argument (don't let the KMT have total control over everything), and the KMT could stumble. But I think the situation looks very grim for Hsieh and for the DPP.

+++++++++++++++

[Taiwan] [KMT] [DPP]

Post Election Analysis

There's plenty of discussion about the reasons and effects of the legislative election...First, Taiwan Communique has a whole edition out on the elections, with articles by Bruce Jacobs, among others. Go here for the most recent issue. Next, a reader in Calgary reminds me that Willy Lam at the Jamestown Foundation has a piece out on it:

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) stunning defeat in Taiwan’s parliamentary polls last weekend is expected to lower tension in the Taiwan Straits and speed up economic integration between the mainland and the self-ruled island. The DPP’s Waterloo may help convince President Chen Shui-bian and other pro-independence politicians in the “Green Party” to re-evaluate and perhaps tone down its tactic of provoking Beijing and capitalizing on the antagonism between Fujianese-speaking native Taiwanese (bensheng ren) and mainlanders (waisheng ren) that followed the Nationalist Government from China to Taiwan in 1949. The prospects of Ma Ying-Jeoh, the presidential candidate for the opposition Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party)—which favors eventual reunification with China—in the March 22 presidential polls have also risen. Cross-Straits development in the coming year or so, however, also depends on reactions from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership. Moreover, the KMT’s total domination of the Legislative Yuan (parliament), which was due as much to the DPP’s falling popularity as to the introduction of a “Japanese-style” electoral system—could upset the delicate balance of power on the island and spell trouble for the future of Taiwanese democracy.

There's quite a lot of people who see the election as one of great harm to Taiwanese democracy -- both Ma and Siew have apparently come out with remarks that one-party rule is a good thing("Just look at Singapore").

++++++++++++++++++++

Also of note is the meeting at the Heritage Foundation the other day, chronicled in the Beltway insider briefing The Nelson Report. Pay close attention to that last paragraph -- and brace yourself for the flow of self-congratulatory verbiage from US officials who will certainly claim that US opposition to Chen's policies helped cause his loss (although not once did I ever hear any Taiwanese mention them).

TAIWAN...very excellent Heritage Foundation discussion yesterday MC'd by Amb. Harvey Feldman, saw KMT rep (and former TECRO official) Jacob Chang come out from behind his usually very quiet positioning, along with DPP rep Mike Fonte, former VP Cheney China expert Steve Yates, and Heritage vet John Tkacik, as they dissected the DPP's devastating defeat in Saturday's LY elections.

If you need the inside baseball version, we urge you to check the Heritage website. For our purposes, the most important parts of the discussion centered on what now seems likely for the Mar. 22 presidential election, especially for the two UN membership referendums about which the Bush Administration has been so critical...at China's behest.

Briefly, Mike did his best...which is always very good...to try and urge perspective on the purely local, purely economic and corruption issues which seemed to feed his party's wipe out.

Discussion there and in other venues generally concludes that the vote against the DPP was genuinely national, and that while presidential nominee Frank Hsieh is personally more moderate than President Chen, the damage done to Taiwan's economy, the corruption problems, and continual discord with the US and China, all add-up to a likely KMT win on Mar. 22.

Jake very calmly and clearly outlined where the KMT did well, what was new about it, and also outlined presidential nominee Ma's promises to improve bilateral relations with both the US and the mainland.

He also made clear that whatever the KMT's goals with China might be, he personally, and Ma personally condemn China's attempt to disrupt Taiwan's democracy...and he strongly denied DPP charges that under a KMT government, the island might "revert to authoritarianism".

And, Chang repeated Ma's "three noes" for the record: no attempt to recall the President, should the DPP's Frank Hsieh be elected; no messing around with Constitutional amendments [one root of the discord with China and the US]; and no bringing of No Confidence votes, despite the massive KMT majority.

Steve Yates, now a private consultant, said that between now and Mar. 22, he didn't think Beijing would alter its fundamental focus on Chen himself, and its basic opposition to the DPP rhetoric and platform...but that he also didn't think China would do anything "risky", in this Olympic year, certainly, but for more basic reasons.

"Beijing is basically risk-averse, and has a lot to lose with the risk of opening a Pandora's Box of 'change' on Taiwan"...making the point that China's slow political evolution compares poorly with Taiwan's dramatic democratic development.

There was a great deal of discussion on whether the strong, even strident US opposition to the UN referendums, and to Chen himself, played a role in the DPP defeat, and in any event, what both the US and China should now say, and do, in the run-up to Mar. 22.

On balance, discussants felt that since it was always clear that nothing Chen or the DPP could say would actually alter the legal status quo, perhaps both the US and China did not have to get so worked-up over Chen's words and threats.

By extension, therefore, it was suggested that the Bush Administration might have kept things calmer had it concentrated on assuring China that "reality" was and is what matters...rather than appearance.

A calmer approach was urged between now and Mar. 22.

A final area of discussion was whether the general deterioration of US-Taiwan political relations can be blamed only on the DPP, or whether the KMT's indulgence in domestic politics at the expense (for example) of passing the defense budget, means that US-Taiwan bilateral relations may have been harmed beyond easy repair.

++++++++++++++++++++

A Taipei Times editorial points to the long-term danger of the kind of permanent majority that the KMT is likely to enjoy, given its superior voter mobilization and gerrymandered districting.....

There is a saying that has long circulated in circles like Washington that "Chinese are too busy making money to worry about democracy."

Author James Mann, however, contends in his book The China Fantasy that this is a fallacy and just a convenient sound bite for foreign businesspeople and politicians who wish to ignore the authoritarian nature of China's current regime while taking advantage of its cheap labor.

The frequent demonstrations seen in Hong Kong opposing Beijing's heavy-handed rule and the lack of democratic progress since its handover to China lend credence to Mann's theory. Just last Sunday, about 20,000 Hong Kongers took to the streets in the latest protest calling for universal suffrage in the territory. The protesters were upset at Beijing's announcement last month that they might be able to elect their leader by 2017. Hong Kongers had been pushing for the right to elect their government by 2012.

It is a safe bet that given the chance, millions of people in China would also help prove Mann right.

Contrast this with events here last Saturday, when Taiwanese voted for a new legislature. The outcome saw the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) gain a two-thirds majority in the legislature, giving the party's presidential candidate, Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), a huge boost ahead of the March presidential poll.

The KMT backs increasing cross-strait economic ties, arguing that more business with China will help solve what they term "Taiwan's economic malaise."

But despite promises from Ma that he will not talk unification if elected president, the increased business and cultural contact that would occur under a Beijing-friendly KMT government and the sacrifices of sovereignty the KMT will have to make to achieve this will make future expressions of Taiwan's current independent status even more difficult and the drift toward some kind of unification agreement all the more unavoidable.

This could eventually pose a threat to the full democratic rights Taiwanese now enjoy.

Increasing cross-strait business ties and investment will only give China more control over Taiwan's prosperity and will likely result in more wealthy and influential Taiwanese tying their colors to Beijing's mast. People like former United Microelectronics Corp chairman Robert Tsao (曹興誠) bear testament to this.

When Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, tried to institutionalize democratic ideals in the territory ahead of its return to China, some of his most vociferous opponents were the billionaire business barons who considered democracy an unnecessary and unwanted obstacle to their continued wealth accumulation.

Mann points out that a similar phenomenon could occur in China's ruling and newly wealthy middle class. This could prevent the move toward democracy in China that US officials seem convinced increased trade relations will eventually bring.

Taking this into account, Taiwanese could also one day find themselves in the same situation as Hong Kongers, where tycoons who hold influence in Taipei and have a vested interest in China continue to oppose democracy.

Of course, Taiwan's already established democratic system would be difficult for China to dismantle, but with Beijing's relentless arms build-up showing no sign of slowing and its burgeoning economic might bringing other powerful countries to heel, 20 years from now Taiwan may be in no position to resist.

How ironic it would be if Taiwan, the first and only true democracy in an ethnic Chinese country, were to buck the global trend and give its hard-won freedom away.

As you can see, much of this analysis focuses on KMT talking points that have become the conventional wisdom, and not on the numbers that point to a very different set of problems for the DPP, as I noted below. Finally, over in Asia Times, an editor argues that All Bets Are Off in our presidential race here. Hsieh may well still win, he says. Over at Thirsty Ghosts Jon Adams of Newsweek here makes the same argument. In case anyone out there is paying attention to numbers, the DPP actually increased its vote totals over 2004, which may mean something. Or may not....

[Taiwan] [KMT] [DPP]

The KMT will not ease relations...and Taiwan's Indie Music Scene, from Seattle

Ted Galen Carpenter, whom I've critiqued here on more than one occasion, has an article in The National Interest arguing that the fundamental support for independence here in Taiwan will rein in the ability of the KMT to cozy up to the PRC government:

If they examine the KMT's position carefully, however, Chinese leaders are likely to be disillusioned. Although Ma does favor eventual reunification, there are three important caveats. First, reunification can take place only if mainland China becomes fully democratic. Ma—and most KMT members—have no interest in having Taiwan unify with China in its current, authoritarian incarnation. Second, reunification can occur only with the explicit consent of the Taiwanese people. In other words, Taiwan would have a veto. Finally, the KMT has reluctantly conceded that all options—even independence—must be available to Taiwanese voters when it comes time to make a decision. All of those caveats are anathema to Beijing.

The reality is that there is not a huge difference between Ma's positions and the policies that Chen's government has pursued. The KMT is simply more subtle and conciliatory in its language, and more cautious about actions that might provoke Beijing. In the short run, the latter is quite important. Whereas Chen and the DPP have repeatedly pushed the envelope on asserting Taiwan's sovereignty, and thereby threatened to disrupt the fragile status quo in the Taiwan Strait (much to Washington's dismay), a KMT government is committed to preserving the status quo. In the long run, though, reunification would not be much more likely under a KMT administration than a DPP one. And it remains to be seen how long Beijing will be content with a status quo that maintains Taiwan's existence as a de facto independent state.

Carpenter's analysis doesn't seem to take into account the numerous "short of formal unification" positions available to Ma and the KMT, that would annex Taiwan to the PRC without any obvious change in status. He also takes Ma at his word. Finally, since China defines the status quo in the Strait, he doesn't really get how it can manipulate Washington (and Taipei's image) to its own benefit -- the KMT will have to come round because it will sooner or later be accused of "risking the status quo." Nevertheless, not everyone in Washington is celebrating the KMT victory. Carpenter should be happy -- an AIT official was cited in the Taipei Times yesterday as saying that the era of large weapons purchases may well be over.

Carpenter's position on the recent election is actually quite nuanced -- much better than a lot of the conventional wisdom running around the media these days:

True, the rout of President Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was an emphatic repudiation of Chen's performance in office. But whether it was a repudiation of his assertive policies toward Beijing is less certain.

Actually, it was not a repudiation of Chen's performance in office, either, as I noted below. But at least Carpenter, who often doesn't get Taiwan, is clued into the fact that Chen's policies in many ways reflected local will.

Meanwhile, on the lighter side, the Seattle Times describes Taiwan's indie music scene....

The musical tastes of Taipei are not too different from Seattle. A recent visit to a record shop there revealed that six out of their Top 10 indie rock titles were from Seattle — and many of those albums were from Sub Pop. Listeners in Taipei must love Band of Horses and the Shins just as much as we do.

As for their tastes in pop, it mirrors ours, too — with sounds echoing the Britney of old, Jonas Brothers and Justin Timberlake. Have a listen to these hot Asian acts......

[Taiwan]

DPP Election Loss: Analysis

Max Hirsch has a great piece in Kyodo News this week, analyzing the election defeat of the DPP. Hirsch has a very sensible contrast to the well-known blog Peking Duck, where Raj has served a series of KMT talking points presented as a "centrist" analysis. Hirsch notes:

On the surface, the DPP's huge loss is easily explainable: a string of corruption scandals surrounding Chen and other DPP officials; a lackluster economy; a gridlocked government; rocky relations with Washington and Beijing; and a loss of diplomatic allies and clout.

Behind the obvious, however, lies a baffling contradiction: Despite its ''worst-ever'' showing at parliamentary polls since becoming the ruling party, the DPP on Saturday actually hit a historic high in terms of its overall share of votes cast in a general election.

That's what I pointed out in the post below this one: the numbers won't support the theory that Chen chased away voters. Hirsch goes on to say:

The DPP reaped some 33 percent of the vote in the general election in 2000, the same year it displaced the KMT as the ruling party after its more than 50 years of one-party rule. In the 2004 general election, the DPP garnered nearly 36 percent of the vote after Chen had won another four-year term as president. Ironically, the DPP's performance Saturday in terms of vote share was its best yet, with its share climbing to somewhere between 37 and 38 percent, experts say. This rising trend points to electoral reform as a subtler and perhaps more important reason for the DPP's shocking loss.

The key point in the DPP loss -- which has hardly a landslide in raw voting -- was that the electoral reform that reduced the number of seats and created a winner take all format, which favored the party with the most money (Hirsch notes that the KMT outspent the DPP by 5-1, citing Taiwan expert Dafydd Fell of the U of London). This, combined with gerrymandering, meant that the DPP was at a massive disadvantage. As a Taipei Times analysis put it on Sunday:

The pan-blue camp won yesterday's legislative election by a wide margin as its main rival, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), failed to come up with effective strategies that could have helped it overcome the disadvantages it faced under the new electoral system, political analysts said yesterday.

Except for certain districts in the south, the structure of most electoral districts favors the pan-blue camp by a 55 to 44 ratio, said Chen Chao-jian (陳朝建), an assistant professor of public affairs at Ming Chuan University.

In a political economy where political identity is the most outstanding single factor, the structure of the districts was the key to KMT dominance that gave it 80% of the seats with only 60% of the vote. Thus, the number one dumb DPP decision was not its party platform but its decision to go along with the legislative "reform" that produced a one-party legislature that is actually less democratic than the "unreformed" version.

As always, let's look at the numbers. I have added the local elections held since 1998 to the list:

1998 County Magistrate/City Mayor elections
KMT 3.56 million + 0.22 million New Party
DPP 1.15 million

2001 Legislative election
Blue vote: 5,136,827
Green vote: 4,249,030

2002 County Magistrate/City Mayor elections
KMT 2.52 + 0.49 million PFP + 0.03 New Party
DPP 1.27 + 0.10 TSU

2004 Legislative election
Blue vote: 4,552,831
Green vote: 4,228,141

2005 County Magistrate/City Mayor elections
KMT 3.54 million + 0.35 PFP + 0.04 New Party
DPP 1.96 million + 0.20 TSU

2007 Legislative Election
KMT 5.0 million
DPP 3.6 million

You can see first of all that only in the highly anomalous 2004 legislative election has the total Green vote managed to reach near the total Blue. Indeed in that year the DPP vote exceeded the KMT vote 3.4 million to 3.1 million, with the PFP taking 1.3 million votes, and 600,000 Blue voters staying home. This made the DPP the single biggest party in the legislature. It is 2004, when all those Blue voters stayed home, not 2007, that cries out for explanation. In 2001 there were over 5 million Blue votes, just as there were in 2007 (however, the DPP exceeded the KMT 3.4 million to 2.9 million; the PFP took 1.9 million votes).

This suggests that another, hidden, absolutely vital component of KMT dominance was its ability to swallow the PFP (and the New Party) over the last couple of years and mobilize former PFP members, as well as its own people, to come out and vote for it. If the PFP were still a mighty force, the KMT might not have had a majority in many districts -- in '01 and '04 the PFP poached over a million votes from the KMT. KMT/Blue voters are far more aware of themselves as a group and an identity than Greens, and many analysts noted the feeling that the party could not concede Taiwan to the DPP. Party discipline was excellent, and in many districts the party made sure voters had transportation and so forth. The KMT cut deals with former PFP members and the two marched in lockstep to victory as the KMT gathered the Blue vote all to itself. The DPP, by contrast, still had to contend with the TSU which obstinately refused to give in and form a Green coalition.

Note that nary a peep was heard from KMT splittist James Soong, former Chairman of the People's First Party (PFP), as his party basically disappeared into the KMT. The silence from Soong was absolutely deafening. By contrast TSU spiritual head former President Lee Teng-hui was still out there campaigning against the DPP and complaining about Chen Shui-bian. That was just plain stupid from the standpoint of the island's long-term needs. Additionally, in some districts disgruntled DPP legislators ran against their own people. The DPP's lack of party discipline and its inability to manage its relations with the TSU hurt it (Hirsch reports that Lee is set to endorse Hsieh for the presidency).

In sum, the KMT/Blues got 5 million votes, about the same as in 2001 (suggesting a natural ceiling for KMT legislative election votes), and the DPP actually increased its totals, both percentage-wise and absolutely, from about 3.4 million to 3.6 million (the Taipei Times has a nice chart of the vote totals). The voting trends are very similar to historical trends, and any explanation that relies on the conventional wisdom of Blame Chen! will have to confront the fact, as Hirsch noted, that the DPP actually increased its vote from 2004. There is no evidence in the voting patterns that voters switched to the KMT from the DPP, that the KMT was able to increase the Blue vote, or that the DPP was impacted by any of the negative publicity in recent months. Competent survey work might find such evidence; but at the moment, no such work exists and all evidence is anecdotal. In the final analysis, this was a perfectly normal legislative election by raw vote counts, completely typical. But with the new, gerrymandered, winner take all districts, conventional just wasn't good enough.

The DPP's failure was the same as we have seen in previous elections: it cannot compete with the KMT's ability to mobilize Blue voters. For better or worse, even though the legislature is far more important than the ROC's weak presidency, Green voters seem to be less interested in getting out there and voting for the DPP at the local level. The DPP is going to have to make some significant investments in the nitty-gritty of voter education and voter mobilization, because in the last three legislative elections it has received 3.4, 3.4, and 3.6 million votes -- which suggests that there is a kind of structural ceiling built into the voting patterns that probably has very little to do with the ebb and flow of campaign rhetoric.

It would be nice if we could say that the modest rise in DPP voters meant something for the future, but to compete with the KMT, the DPP would have to be able to get 5 million people out there to vote for it at the local level. It has never even come close to such a figure in a local election. In the Presidential election of 2004 6.4 million people voted Green, and 6.4 million voted Blue. That probably represents the upper bound of people willing to come out and vote in Taiwan. If we replay the 2000 presidential election this year, as we have replayed the 2001 legislative elections, the Blues took 7.58 million votes, Chen Shui-bian, 4.97 million votes (source), for about 12.6 million votes cast, which suggests that the Presidential pool is about 12.6-8 million votes, meaning that in the next 70 days the DPP will have to mobilize 6.4 million voters, again. If the Blame Chen! theorists are right, maybe we'll see a return to the 2000 voting levels as swing voters either stay home or switch to Blue. Your guess is as good as mine.....

Implications for the future? I observed a couple of weeks ago that the DPP strategy in making Chen Shui-bian chair of the DPP was probably to permit the egg from this defeat to stick to the lame-duck Chen, and not land on Hsieh or any up-and-coming politician. In that scenario Hsieh then rides in to become DPP Chairman, as indeed he has, and then the DPP presidential campaign gets a big boost as Hsieh rides in on a white horse to save it. Unfortunately the debacle was so great that any boost Hsieh could have gotten has been swamped by KMT trumpeting of landslide! Like everyone, I await the DPP's strategy for climbing out of this hole -- yet also, note that despite the negatives, the DPP was still able to increase its vote -- whereas despite the negatives for the DPP, the KMT reached its previous ceiling. Does that auger well for the future? Perhaps....

Where the effects will be felt is at the local level. With the legislature to provide cover, local officials, who are 90% KMT, can now engage in election shenanigans with impunity -- one of the first acts of the new legislature, I suspect, will be to formally or informally pull the teeth of the Ministry of Justice and the Central Election Commission's investigative apparatus, which at the moment is looking at a historic high of 6,100 vote buying cases. Disclaimer: note that I am not saying that local officials WILL engage in shenanigans, I am only saying that they CAN. Of course, I would never assert, in a public forum, that anyone would actually engage in serious illegal election activity.

Apologies for the lack of blogging recently. It's finals week here -- one reason the student vote was apparently low -- and I am swamped. Couldn't the CEC have scheduled this election three weeks ago when people weren't so busy?

[Taiwan] [KMT] [DPP]

Some preliminary numbers

Let's start with the polls. Several people have written to say "Looks like those biased polls were right." ESWN has a post on it up on his widely read blog, so let's take a look at his data. ESWN observed:

But what were the public opinion polls saying? The following table is compiled from the list of polls conducted by TVBS one to three months before the elections. The entries show the percentages for the KMT candidate versus the DPP candidate; the green entries are those in which the DPP candidate is ahead. Before the actual election results in, poll results such as these are contemptuously dismissed as "pan-blue" polls.

District	TVBS Poll	Actual Result
Taipei City 1	57% vs. 26%	60% vs. 39%
Taipei City 2	51% vs. 27%	52% vs. 46%
Taipei City 3	51% vs. 25%	60% vs. 38%
Taipei City 4	50% vs. 27%	62% vs. 35%
Taipei City 5	44% vs. 26%	58% vs. 41%
Taipei City 6	59% vs. 24%	67% vs. 32%
Taipei City 7	60% vs. 19%	66% vs. 32%
Taipei City 8	55% vs. 19%	72% vs. 26%
Taipei County 1	49% vs. 21%	58% vs. 40%
Taipei County 2	31% vs. 24%	40% vs. 43%
Taipei County 3	47% vs. 29%	48% vs. 50%
Taipei County 4	46% vs. 30%	52% vs. 47%
Taipei County 5	45% vs. 33%	52% vs. 47%
Taipei County 6	51% vs. 28%	57% vs. 43%
Taipei County 7	51% vs. 24%	56% vs. 42%
Taipei County 8	47% vs. 31%	60% vs. 40%
Taipei County 10	52% vs. 23%	60% vs. 39%
Taipei County 12	45% vs. 17%	52% vs. 38%
Chiayi County 1	35% vs. 34%	58% vs. 42%
Chiayi County 2	26% vs. 41%	42% vs. 57%
Kaohsiung City 1	53% vs. 25%	58% vs. 41%
Kaohsiung City 2	43% vs. 33%	49% vs. 51%
Kaohsiung City 3	44% vs. 28%	49% vs. 43%
Kaohsiung City 4	43% vs. 29%	51% vs. 47%
Kaohsiung City 5	32% vs. 40%	46% vs. 52%
Tainan City 1	47% vs. 30%	50% vs. 50%
Tainan City 2	40% vs. 38%	48% vs. 50%
Tainan County 1	31% vs. 36%	45% vs. 55%
Tainan County 2	25% vs. 42%	41% vs. 59%
Tainan County 3	32% vs. 37%	47% vs. 53%

The problem with the pro-Blue polls like TVBS (100% owned by Hong Kong Chinese) is not that they are right or wrong in hindsight, it is that they cannot be trusted beforehand because they are pro-Blue and consistently underestimate Green votes. You only have to scan the list and look at the Green column for TVBS poll results and actual results. In almost every case, the poll underestimates the Green vote by 25-50%, sometimes even more. In Taipei county districts 4-12, for example, TVBS had:

Green vote:
District 4 projected: 30 actual: 47 disparity: 56%
District 5 projected: 33 actual: 47 disparity: 42%
District 6 projected: 28 actual: 43 disparity: 53%
District 7 projected: 24 actual: 42 disparity: 75%
etc.

The phenomenon of pro-Blue polls underestimating Green votes is well known here, and as you can see, TVBS sometimes errs by 50% in its estimates. Such polls are useless, except as propaganda tools -- which is why they exist, and why they can't be trusted.

Was it possible to predict this debacle? Yes, but not from looking at polling data in the Blue papers, which was worthless. Indeed, numerous ominous rumblings reached my ears last week, but I discounted them for the same reason that I discount polls from the Dark Side: the Green voters conceal their plans, as ESWN's data so eloquently shows. Perhaps the KMT and DPP internal polls showed something, but they weren't releasing their data. Nevertheless, there were people out there who foresaw disaster, though as far as I know, nobody picked the KMT to get over 80 seats.

Let's now look at the numbers from the last several legislative elections. I gathered them up last year for a post on US State Department official Tom Christensen's erroneous belief that the US kept the DPP from doing as well as expected in the Legislative elections in '04. Here are the figures:

2001
Blue Parties, total votes
KMT 2,949,371
PFP 1,917,836
New 269,620

Total Blue vote: 5,136,827

2001
Green parties total votes
DPP 3,447,740
TSU 801,560

Total Green Vote: 4,249,030
Total turnout (66%)

++++++++++++

2004
Blue Parties total votes
KMT 3,190,081
PFP 1,350,613
New 12,137

Total Blue Vote: 4,552,831

2004 Green parties total votes
DPP 3,471,429
TSU 756,712

Total Green votes: 4,228,141
(Total turnout 59%)

2001 Blue vote: 5,136,827
2004 Blue vote: 4,552,831

2001 Green vote: 4,249,030
2004 Green vote: 4,228,141

2001-2004 difference
Blue: - 583,996
Green: - 20,889

In other words, in '04 the DPP did well because Blue voters stayed home. The '08 totals are up on the CEC website:

Major parties, 2007 LY election, total votes (election held 1-12-08)

2008
KMT 5,010,801
DPP 3,610,106

Let's see that another way:

2001 Blue vote: 5,136,827
2004 Blue vote: 4,552,831
2008 Blue vote 5,010,801 (+ 0.38 million New Party) ~5.4 million

In other words, the Blues manage to raise their votes back to their 1998 levels of 5.3 million -- the most Blue votes in an LY election in a decade. Meanwhile, what about the DPP and the Greens?

2001 Green vote: 4,249,030
2004 Green vote: 4,228,141
2008 Green vote 3,610,106 (+.35 million TSU) ~4.0 million

There's going to be lots of temptation to criticize the DPP. What were the DPP's vote totals?

2001 DPP 3,447,740
2004 DPP 3,471,429
2008 DPP 3,610,106

Yes, you're not going blind. The DPP actually raised its vote total by 140,000 votes over 2004, despite the barrage of negative campaigning. Where did the Greens lose out? TSU votes plummeted, from 756,000 votes in 2004 to just 344,000 in 2008.

The short answer to today's election loss is really quite simple -- the KMT was effective in getting out absolutely everyone who would vote for it. The long answer is one I'll have up in a couple of days, when I digest what's being written and said about this disaster for Taiwan and its future.

UPDATE: the number I am using is the number for party ballots. Voters cast two ballots in this election, one for the candidate and one for the party. The party ballot figure is lower, so I figured it is more conservative. I haven't seen constituent numbers yet.

[Taiwan]

Election Pics Again

The election is tomorrow, so I thought I'd inundate you with more election pictures, so everyone in the world can be overwhelmed with the sound and color of elections here in Taiwan.

One predominant myth that colors academic discourse on Taiwan, which I have frequently argued against, is that local voters prefer candidates who are not corrupt. I think this election will forever do that myth in. The middle class here does not want clean government -- it wants government that will assure the flow of funds from the center out to the electorate -- and clean government won't do that. The preference for corrupt candidates -- of which there are countless examples here in Taiwan -- also bodes ill for democratic development in China. Jim Mann has already argued in his recent book The China Fantasy that the middle class in China will ally itself with the authoritarian state to protect its privileges against urban and rural poor. Here is another incentive for them to keep the authoritarian state in being -- corruption helps sustain the political economy of local contracting and development that keeps local middle classes happy.

Feiren emailed me the following from FTV:

進入投票所依序會領四張票，分別是區域立委選票、不分區政黨選票，及兩張公投選票。公投選票，領了也可以不投，只要退給選務人員就好，但千萬別撕毀，或把選票帶出去，以免觸法。再次提醒您，立委合併公投選舉，投票時間1/12早上八點到下午四點，展現民主精神，別忽視你手中神聖的一票。
Each voter should collect 4 ballots: one for the local district legislative representative, one for legislator-at-large, and two referendum ballots. After picking up the referendum ballots, voters can choose not to cast them, but they must be returned to election officials. The ballots must not be torn-up or taken out of the polling station. Fines will apply to those who disobey. Voting for the legislative election and the two referendums will begin at 8am and close at 4pm in the afternoon. So bring your id, chop, and voting card to be sure that you will be able to exercise your right to vote, and don't forget to return the referendum ballots if you decide not to participate. (Feiren trans.)

Feiren observes that this will mean you will have to get back in line to return the ballot -- perhaps increasing the incentive to vote for the referendums -- if this report is true.

Everyone I've been listening to is saying the same thing -- the DPP will not do well. 40 seats only, by some sources.

The government is investigating a record number of vote buying cases.

The whole DPP brain trust backs this candidate.

Regardless of sex, candidates love to be seen in athletic poses. This year, because of the success of pitcher Wang Chien-ming with the Yankees, everyone is into baseball.

On a sunny Tainan street, a candidate looks down.

Because there is a limit on the amount of money that can be spent on a gift to a voter -- NT$30 -- most candidates hand out pens, notepads, and tissues.

Signs frequently overlook intersections.

One of the most annoying aspects of KMT success in this election is going to be another interminable load of crap from the Talking Heads inside the Beltway about (1) how the US influenced the election and (2) how Taiwan's independence movement is fading.

In many adverts for KMT candidates Ma and Siew, party affiliation is absent. The rhetoric is also Taiwan-centered.

Shelly Rigger has a good explanation of the changes in the legislature and the election in the WSJ this week.

Lee Teng-hui, please fold up the TSU and retire. Please.

Someone has scratched out their faces.

In Hell, the sound trucks run 24-7.

The DPP candidate in the center has the strong support of local KMT officials for getting the job done. Legislators are commonly involved in all sorts of local affairs -- even to the extent of getting calls from constituents if they get involved in a traffic accident.

Note how "China" is written in simplified Chinese.

One of the reasons election ads are so fascinating is that they are often juxtposed with ordinary ads, in quite striking and ironic ways.

Ma and Siew on the side of a bus. The color scheme is quite attractive. Note also the open necked shirts, in contrast to Hsieh and Su, who often appear in ties.

[Taiwan] [KMT] [DPP]