Surveys show Taiwanese voters increasingly support dictatorship while rejecting democracy and independence.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/12/20
By: Dongtao Qi
Credit: AP / TPG
The results of Taiwan’s 2018 nine-in-one local elections surprised many observers. Surely many of them had been anticipating the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s loss in both votes and seats in the elections, but almost nobody had foreseen that the DPP would be defeated by the Kuomintang (KMT) so badly.
Most observers agree that two factors significantly contributed to the DPP’s disastrous defeat. First, increasingly popular and strong dissatisfaction with the Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) administration’s performance, especially its many controversial reforms. Second, the so-called “Han wave” led by the Kaohsiung mayoral candidate of the KMT Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) who successfully mobilized various discontented social groups in not only Kaohsiung, but also some other places, to vote against the DPP candidates.
Credit: AP / TPGChen Chi-mai (陳其邁) lost the Kaohsiung mayoral election, handing the DPP stronghold to the KMT for the first time in 20 years.
Indeed, these are two obvious reasons for the DPP’s election defeat. The public opinion surveys by Taiwan’s major media had shown the public’s constant decrease of the approval rating for the Tsai administration, and in contrast, a significant increase of support for Han before the elections. However, three other important public opinion trends that paved the way for the DPP’s loss and the KMT’s victory are largely missing in the discussion of the elections.
The first public opinion trend is declining public support for Taiwan’s independence, and rising support for both status quo and unification with China. According to TEDS2017_PA03 and TEDS2018_PA03provided by the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University, the percentage of voters who support Taiwan’s independence had constantly decreased from 31.1 percent in 2016 to 26.1 percent in 2017 and further to 21.9 percent in 2018, a 9.2 percent drop from 2016 to 2018.
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