Taiwan’s third parties made positive gains in the 2018 elections.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/12/19
By: If Lin
Credit: Reuters / Olivia Harris
November’s nine-in-one local elections provided some shocking results. While many young Taiwanese are either grieving the referendum results as proof of Taiwan’s “conservative values” or expressing surprise that Kuomintang (KMT) mayoral candidates Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) and Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) won by margins of over 100,000 votes in Kaohsiung and Taichung, respectively, it seems few people have paid much attention to the national “councilor-level” elections – especially the success of Taiwan’s “third force” parties at winning local seats.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at some basic information about Taiwan’s councilor-elects in the last five elections (1998-2018).
In 1998, about three quarters of councilor-elects were between 40 and 69 years old, and about a quarter were between 20 and 39. However, the percentage of young councilor-elects decreased in the following years. In 2014, only 11.6 percent of councilor-elects were 20-39-year-olds, while the percentage of 40-69-year-olds spiked to 84.7 percent.
In the 2018 election, however, the percentage of 20-39-year-old councilor-elects grew for the first time in 20 years, rising slightly to 16.98 percent. 40-69-year-old councilor-elects dropped by around three percentage points.
[FULL STORY]
