Live Commentary
9:25am Sunday Final results: Lai defeated Hou by 40.1-33.5, a 6.6% margin, with 26.5% for Ko. However, the DPP lost its majority in the 113-member legislature, with the KMT winning 52 seats (up 14 since 2020), the DPP 51 (down ten), the TPP eight (up three) and others two (down seven). The DPP will need support from either the KMT or TPP to reach the 57 votes needed for a majority.
11:07pm With 95% reporting, Lai leads Hou by 40.3-33.4 with 26.3% for Ko. Although his lead has slipped with counting of final votes, Lai has still clearly won. A reminder that this election is by First Past the Post, so there’s no runoff.
10:24pm With 76% reporting, Lai leads Hou by 41.1-33.2 with 25.7% for Ko.
9:11pm With 16% reporting, Lai leads Hou by 43.1-33.6 with 23.4% for Ko. Looking very likely Lai will win a record third consecutive term for the DPP.
8:33pm With 3% reporting, Lai leads Hou by 43.2-35.6 with 21.2% for Ko.
7:30pm Bloomberg says the first results from Taiwan should be out after 8pm AEDT.
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.
Polls close at 7pm AEDT today for Taiwan’s presidential election, in which first past the post is used. There are three candidates: William Lai of the centre-left and pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Hou You-ih of the more pro-China and conservative Kuomintang (KMT) and Ko Wen-je of the populist Taiwan People’s Party (TPP).
The DPP holds the presidency, with incumbent Tsai Ing-wen elected for two terms since 2016, but she can’t run again owing to term limits. There had been speculation that the KMT and TPP would form a joint ticket before nominations closed on November 24, but this fell apart.
Publication of polls has not been permitted since January 3. The final polls released before this date showed Lai leading Hou by two to five points, with one poll giving Lai an 11-point lead. Ko’s support was in the low 20’s. If Lai wins, it would be the first time the same party has won the presidency for three consecutive terms. This election is likely to be the first since 2000 when the winner did not receive a vote majority.
Trump set for big win in Iowa caucus
The first US presidential nominating contest will be Monday’s Iowa Republican caucus (Tuesday AEDT). The FiveThirtyEight aggregate of Iowa polls shows Donald Trump way ahead with 51.3%, followed by Nikki Haley at 17.3% and Ron DeSantis at 16.1%. I will have a separate post on Iowa on Tuesday.
The New Hampshire primary follows Iowa on January 23. Trump is leading in NH with 41.4%, followed by Haley at 30.0% and DeSantis at 6.1%. There has been a surge for Haley since December. She should be helped by the withdrawal of anti-Trump candidate Chris Christie on Wednesday; Christie had 11.6% in NH polls.
In national Republican polls, Trump is far ahead with 60.4%, followed by DeSantis at 12.1% and Haley at 11.7%. On Super Tuesday March 5, many states will vote, and Trump and Joe Biden will probably be close to clinching their parties’ nominations after this date. No high-profile Democrat has challenged Biden for the Democratic nomination.
I covered the US presidential election for The Conversation on December 13. I said that while Trump was leading Biden, there were two main chances of a Biden recovery: an improvement in economic sentiment and a Trump conviction. But Biden will be almost 82 by the November election, while Trump will be 78.
Upcoming US and UK by-elections
Republican George Santos was expelled from the federal House on December 1 by a 311-114 vote (a two-thirds majority was required). Santos was facing 23 indictments when expelled. A by-election will be held on February 13 in Santos’ former seat (New York’s third). In 2022, Santos gained this seat from the Democrats by a 53.8-46.2 margin. According to Daily Kos elections, Biden won this seat in 2020 by an 8.2% margin. A late November poll gave the Democrat a three-point lead.
In most midterm elections, the non-presidential party has won easily. Democrats did well in 2022 to keep Republicans to a 222-213 federal House majority, a Republican gain of nine seats on 2020. But Democrats lost four seats in New York.
Republicans currently hold a 220-213 House majority after former Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy resigned on December 31. McCarthy’s seat is safe Republican, so this by-election is unlikely to be competitive. A Democratic win in New York’s third would reduce the Republican majority to 220-214 until McCarthy’s seat is filled.
By-elections will occur on February 15 in the UK Conservative-held seat of Wellingborough and Kingswood. In Wellingborough MP Peter Bone was recalled following a six-week parliamentary suspension, while in Kingswood MP Chris Skidmore resigned in protest over more oil and gas licenses. In 2019 Bone won Wellingborough by 62.2-26.5 over Labour with 7.9% for the Liberal Democrats, while Skidmore won Kingswood by 56.2-33.4 over Labour with 6.9% Lib Dem. The Conservatives have lost safer seats at by-elections this term.
Thanks Adrian, really pleased to see you are covering this as this is one of the most important elections for the West taking place all year in terms of the geopolitical impacts that may ensue, even though Taiwan is not in the West.
With the Labour Party in the UK having moved more towards the mainstream under Keir Starmer, frankly the UK election will not have so much of an impact – not even in the UK, let alone anywhere else – though Ukraine will be watching closely for any softening of UK leadership over the war in Russia that they have so appreciated.
The one election that will trump (no pun intended) even the Taiwan election for its impact will be in the US of A (if one assumes Donald Trump is the Republican candidate).
According to Taiwan Plus News.
At 8pm AEDT:
Ko Wen-Je (TPP) 252,230 (29.28%)
Lai Ching-te (DPP) 326,739 (37.92%)
Hou Yu-it (KMT) 282,592 (32.8%)
https://www.taiwanplus.com/taiwan-election-2024/results?title=President&source=1
Thanks Adrian, really pleased to see you are covering this as this is one of the most important elections for the West taking place all year in terms of the geopolitical impacts that may ensue, even though Taiwan is not in the West.
With the Labour Party in the UK having moved more towards the mainstream under Keir Starmer, frankly the UK election will not have so much of an impact – not even in the UK, let alone anywhere else – though Ukraine will be watching closely for any softening of UK leadership over the war in Russia that they have so appreciated.
The one election that will trump (no pun intended) even the Taiwan election for its impact will be in the US of A (if one assumes Donald Trump is the Republican candidate).
Chinese so called ambassador threatened the safety of the Australian people in the past day.China and communist sell out Anthony Albanese and his China supporting government say nothing.More interested in letting Chinese buy Australian property and fill our Universities with their students.
Adrian- Do we have any idea of what area is counted first? As the results previously have been quite regional.
Save it for the open threads please, PP.
Thanks for this post, Adrian.
I have collaborated with various people and institutions in Taiwan, and love the place and its people.
My first collaborator (we did our PhD’s at the same time, intersecting through our supervisors at the Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie in Bonn, Germany) considered himself one of the original Taiwanese inhabitants, pre-dating the Kuomintang who arrived in circa 1949, led of course by Chiang kai-shek, who then just took over the place by force.
Later, over several decades, I have worked with a number of Taiwanese scientists, and we have put together some great collaborations, with mainland Chinese, Japanese and collaborators from around the world.
Why is this important: Most Taiwanese people just want to live their lives and keep the situation they live in stable – not unlike Northern Ireland.
That the Kuomintang party was still a viable option for Tawainese voters circa 2016 / 2017, when I was there, really surprised me.
Each day someone would put an English language newspaper under my hotel door, which I would read over coffee. It seemed that the US had sent a gunboat to Taipei, and that the Chinese were not happy.
And the Kuomintang wanted a unified China. I think perhaps by this time the Kuomintang, who after all had been exiled from mainland China for over 70 years, just wanted to get unified again, and dealing with the capitalist running dogs unleashed by Deng Xiaoping sort of gave them cover after their civil war (lost) against Mao.
It was all irrelevant to my work in the Academica Sineca, and also to all the people I met on the streets of Taipei.
All my Taiwanese collaborators wanted was for things to continue as they were: being in some sort of stable equilibrium with Mainland China that meant all could keep doing what they had been doing.
63% of votes reported and Lai leads by 8% (41% vs 33%) over Hou.
Looks like a clear cut DPP victory.
https://www.taiwanplus.com/taiwan-election-2024/results?title=President&source=1
Is this election simply most votes wins? No preferences or run-offs?
Don’t they have run-offs?
https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-election-laundry-detergent-giveaway-9e0ad520dffe86e2455530568e67ae79
It turns out that some voter mistakenly ate laundry tablets that were being given away at the polls thinking they were candy. It think cleaning products are better than how to vote cards.
From what I can read (Wikipedia only) Taiwanese presidential elections are first past the post. There is an eligibility requirement that in practice limits candidates to coming from large parties (one each).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Taiwan
Reading the BBC reporting of results, it sounds very much like there are no preferences or run-offs, so Lai and the DPP will win with a bit over 40% of the vote. So tensions with Beijing will likely increase.
Taiwan is currently de jure a rebel province of the PRC, but de facto an independent state. Sooner or later, that contradiction needs to be resolved. It’s hard to see how any Chinese government could ever accept a truly independent Taiwan, particularly if it is aligned with the USA and Japan. Is there the possibility that Taiwan eventually forms some sort of loose confederation with China, maybe a single economic zone, while retaining it’s own elected government and armed forces? Is that something that everyone could live with?
If Taiwan had a preferential voting system like Australia, then the KMT would have won. Most TPP voters would prefer the KMT over the DPP.
Ko Wen-je, kind of reminds me of Ross Perot
No run offs from what I understand.
“If Taiwan had a preferential voting system like Australia, then the KMT would have won. Most TPP voters would prefer the KMT over the DPP.”
Not necessarily, it might have even led to the opposite effect. TPP’s slogan was ‘Get rid of blue and green’ – the colours representing the 2 traditional parties – and there’s no doubt they took lots of votes from both.
Maybe there’s some qualitative surveys somewhere which quantify this more accurately?
Parliamentary seats, 113 total:
DPP 51
KMT 52
TPP 8
Independents 2
DPP lost their majority as expected.
While I have a great deal of sympathy for the DPP, and was highly impressed by Tsai Ing-wen, I do not see this result as a great day for democracy in Taiwan.
IMO the Taiwanese election system is highly flawed. Not only do they not have a run-off vote for the Presidential election, which means that Lai has won with only 40 per cent of the votes, but the complete absence of any sort of postal/absentee/pre-poll voting arrangements has effectively disenfranchised large numbers of voters: particularly older voters who might well have been more inclined to vote for Hou.
Given that the result of this election is potentially of existential significance to Taiwan, I think the Taiwanese electors would have been entitled to expect something a lot better than this.
BTW, anyone with a particular interest in Taiwanese electoral politics might enjoy the fictional series Wave Makers, which can be found on Netflix. It’s a kind of a cross between West Wing and Borgen. I’ve only watched a few episodes so far, but I’ve found it quite entertaining.
With the DPP winning the presidency but losing it’s majority in Parliament it will be interesting to see how new President Lai goes.
I am not sure what the balance of powers is between the President and Parliament but it could result in “interesting times”.
Lai Wins Presidency, But DPP Fails to Hold Majority in Legislature
https://newbloommag.net/2024/01/13/lai-victory/
Taiwan’s DPP Wins Presidency, Falls Short in Legislature
Lai Ching-te won with a plurality, largely due to a divided opposition. But the loss of the DPP’s legislative majority is a warning sign for the party moving forward.
https://thediplomat.com/2024/01/taiwans-dpp-wins-presidency-falls-short-in-legislature/
Newcastle Moderate says:
Saturday, January 13, 2024 at 11:16 pm
Reading the BBC reporting of results, it sounds very much like there are no preferences or run-offs, so Lai and the DPP will win with a bit over 40% of the vote. So tensions with Beijing will likely increase.
Taiwan is currently de jure a rebel province of the PRC, but de facto an independent state. Sooner or later, that contradiction needs to be resolved. It’s hard to see how any Chinese government could ever accept a truly independent Taiwan, particularly if it is aligned with the USA and Japan. Is there the possibility that Taiwan eventually forms some sort of loose confederation with China, maybe a single economic zone, while retaining it’s own elected government and armed forces? Is that something that everyone could live with?
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I myself once thought there could be some arrangement of that sort. Say, the Chinese flag flies over all of China and Taiwan, with the Taiwanese province being autonomous, able to manage all its affairs bar foreign and defence policies.
That way, Taiwan could maintain its internal democratic structures and freedoms for the small price of swearing allegiance to Beijing. It would be similar to the one-country, two-systems policy which was supposed to apply to Hong Kong for 50 years after 1997.
But after 2020, when Beijing couldn’t even wait till 2047 to impose its total rule over Hong Kong, I don’t think many people in Taiwan have had much confidence in Chinese promises. Not that many Taiwanese were all that inclined to support “reunification” in the first place.
More recently, the Chinese ambassador to Australia not only reaffirmed China’s “right” to take Taiwan by force, but rather ominously added that Taiwanese “separatists” could be dealt with, following the happy return of its people to the loving embrace of the mother country.
According to polls, at most, only 16% of Taiwanese would support Chinese sovereignty. As older generations die off, even fewer Taiwanese will see themselves as part of the Chinese nation.
That kind of adds up to a lot of “separatists”, who might consider their future in a reunited China as being somewhat similar to that of the Uighurs in the Xinjiang province.
China is too nationalistic and too arrogant to recognise the reality of an independent Taiwan. At the same time, no sane person wants a war across the Taiwan Strait that could involve the United States and other countries as well.
The status quo of Taiwan’s de facto independence alongside China’s de jure sovereignty over the island is absurd, and far from desirable. But it seems that maintaining this status quo, even for the unforeseeable long-term future, is the best possible thing to do.
Commentators are highly mistaken if they think Lai would have lost on preferences. A large segment of the TPP vote is young people who saw the DPP as too conventional, and not radical enough – think the same sex rights legislation from their first term. They voted TPP as a protest vote, but most of them voted DPP in 2020 in the 57-30 drubbing.
China in fact supported the TPP as an attempt to siphon the youth vote to get the KMT over the line and they failed. They would also have failed under a preferential system; many younger voters I know went for them for the reasons I mentioned, but would still prefer Lai over the KMT.
The DPP presidential victory is a lifeline for Taiwan’s continued de facto independence, and probably Taiwan’s best outcome unless you are of the 2% that desire subjugation by the mainland.
The loss of the absolute majority in the Legislative Yuan may prove problematic as spending bills – particularly on arms purchases – may be less easy to pass. However, to date the legislature has been pretty cooperative with the executive, so there’s hope.
Any ideas on here that somehow China would be happy with anything other than full control over Taiwan like they basically now have in Hong Kong are in Dreamland, and are surprisingly naive as to the nature of the China regime.
The comments would have been understandable in 2004, but if elected politicians in 2024 anywhere still think along those lines of ‘a middle road that suits both Taiwan and China’ then I would regard them as dangerous (‘useful fools’ – for China that is – is the phrase I believe).