Taiwanese election, Jan 2016

[jaichind]

  KMT          DPP            PFP
30.71%   56.56%   12.73%   Official
31.10%   55.99%   12.91%   KMT count
29.84%   57.77%   12.39%   Pro-KMT Media TVBS
29.22%   58.68%   12.09%   Pro-DPP media San Li
29.60%   58.26%   12.14%   Pro-KMT Media China Times
29.60%   58.10%   12.29%   Pro-KMT Media China TV

Other than Official Count and KMT count the numbers pretty much stopped from the Media outfits.  ROC media tends to "make up" numbers base on their guess on what the count is like to get more people to watch their channels.  Since the early count showed a massive DPP Tsai victory their "made up" numbers tend to favor Tsai.  Now the Official numbers are coming in and their guesses overestimated Tsai by a couple of percentage points now they have to slowly roll it back.  In a very close election this causes massive problems like in 2004.  Here it makes no difference.  DPP's Tsai won by a massive margin one way or another.

[jaichind]

Tsai won every County and City except for Deep Blue Hualian County and Taidong County where ironically the DPP won the Legislative seats.   This can be explained by the that the the Aborigine vote which high in those two counties votes in the Prez race but not the Legislative race.  They vote in the special Aborigine multi-member seats.  Although in other Deep blue counties like Hsichu and Maioli as well as Keelong City the Pan-Blue vote did beat DPP.   Pan-Blues lost Nanto County even as the KMT won both Legislative seats there.  

[jaichind]

  KMT         DPP           PFP
30.78%   56.46%   12.76%   Official
31.05%   56.04%   12.90%   KMT count
29.84%   57.77%   12.39%   Pro-KMT Media TVBS
29.22%   58.68%   12.09%   Pro-DPP media San Li
29.60%   58.26%   12.14%   Pro-KMT Media China Times
29.60%   58.10%   12.29%   Pro-KMT Media China TV

Now that the total vote count in the Official results are pretty close the the Media "counts" we can be pretty sure that the Official numbers are the most accurate now.   If so DPP's Tsai might end up winning only around 6.4 million votes only slightly more than her 6.1 million votes in 2012.  

[jaichind]

Latest count

DPP        56.4%  6.4 million votes
KMT       30.8%
PFP        12.8%

[jaichind]

Latest count

DPP        56.3%  6.5 million votes
KMT       30.9%
PFP        12.8%

[jaichind]

Latest count

DPP        56.2%  6.66 million votes
KMT       31.0%
PFP        12.8%

[jaichind]

It seems DPP's Tsai won Taipei City with over 50% of the vote there.   Impressive.  Shows the extent how the Deep Blue base mostly sat out this election.

[jaichind]

Latest count

DPP        56.2%  6.7 million votes
KMT       31.0%
PFP        12.8%

[jaichind]

Tsai's vote inching up.  Most likely still will not reach what KMT's Ma got in 2012 of 6.9 million votes. 

[jaichind]

Turnout was most likely around 67%.  If I was told ahead of time that the turnout was around 67% then I would say that DPP's Tsai would be around 55% which is about what we are seeing.  I was expecting a turnout of around 72%-73%.  The entire 周子瑜 (Chou Tzu-yu) fiasco, which I did not get to write about but will, right before the election most likely pushed up the DPP turnout.

[jaichind]

Latest count

DPP        56.2%  6.8 million votes
KMT       31.0%
PFP        12.8%

[jaichind]

Party list vote so far is

DPP       44.1%     18 seats
KMT       26.9%     11 seats
PFP         6.5%        3 seats
NPP         6.1%       2 seats
NP          4.2%
SDP        2.5%
TSU        2.5%
FHL        1.7%
MKT       1.6%

If somehow NP go over 5% these results will be quite good for Pan-Blue camp under the circumstances.

[jaichind]

Latest count

DPP        56.16%  6.86 million votes
KMT       31.01%
PFP        12.82%

This is pretty much final.  Perhaps a few thousand votes here or there.

[jaichind]

The party list vote lines up pretty well with Prez vote

Pan-Green
DPP               44.1
NPP                6.1
Green-SDP      2.5
TSU                2.5
TP                  0.6
LTP                0.4
TIP                 0.2
LCA               0.1
------------------------
                   56.6

Pan-Blue

KMT             26.9
PFP               6.5
NP                4.1
FHL              1.7
MKT             1.6
MTU             0.7
NPB             0.6
CUL             0.4
HIA              0.4
PDA             0.3
------------------------
                  43.4

Which matches 56.1 to 43.9 for Green-Blue Balance in Prez race which actually means a tiny part of the Pan-Green vote went to PFP's Sung.

[jaichind]

Latest count

DPP        56.14%  6.88 million votes
KMT       31.03%
PFP        12.83%

[jaichind]

Back in 2004 when DPP's Chen won a close re-election with 50.1% of the vote he managed 6.47 million votes which feels a lot like Tsai's 6.9 million votes today.  It is the Pan-Blue vote which was 6.44 million in 2004, 7.6 million in 2008, 7.26 million in 2012, and now 5.38 million in 2016 which is a massive drop.

[jaichind]

Latest count

DPP        56.13%  6.89 million votes
KMT       31.04%
PFP        12.83%

[jaichind]

Legislature will be

                 District     Aborigine      Party List   

DPP              49             1                   18                68
NPP               3                                     2                  5
KMT rebel      1                                                         1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pan-Green                                                              74


KMT             20             4                   11                35
PFP                                                      3                  3
NPB                              1                                         1
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pan-Blue                                                                 39

The KMT rebel who was elected with DPP support might end up back with KMT.  We will see.                     

[jaichind]

Latest count

DPP        56.12%  6.89 million votes
KMT       31.04%
PFP        12.84%

[jaichind]

Congrats to DPP and Tsai.  It is quite an accomplishment for a women to become a leader when she is NOT the daughter or wife of another prominent male leader, especially in Asia.

[jaichind]

One thing that is interesting about this result is the return of the "689 Conspiracy."   

Back in 2012 it was Ma vs Tsai and the consensus was that the race was neck-to-neck.  A day before the election several political boards, especially on Pan-Green political boards, had someone posting a non-nonsensical post over and over again which pretty much says "Remember 689.  This election result has been planned ahead of time.  You will know after the election.  Remember 689."  Then Ma won by a significant margin which surprised many, especially pan-Green voters and he won with 6.89 million votes.  The Pan-Green internet board was abuzz for weeks about that post before the election as proof of KMT rigging of the election.  Now in 2016 DPP's Tsai wins with.... 6.89 million votes.

[jaichind]

Looks like the DPP was fairly effective in consolidating the Party List vote.  Toward the end of the election campaign there seems to be a strong movement among Youth Pan-Green circles to vote NPP, SDP-Green, and TSU in the party list indicating that the DPP cannot be trusted to pursue a true reformist pro-independence line and there were talk taht NPP might get to 15% of the vote on the party list. DPP had to go on a campaign last week before the election to counteract this.  Given the vote shares of NPP, SDP-Green and TSU, it seems DPP was successful.  On the Pan-Blue side, there was an unsaid movement to move votes from KMT to NP to get NP instead of PFP over the 5% threshold.  Looks like it almost worked.  NP on its own would most likely have gotten around 2% but ended up with 4.1%. Close but no cigar.

The main risk for DPP for NPP getting above 5% is that in 2020, with Sung out of the way the PFP vote will merge back into KMT.  But if DPP does not peruse the radical line then NPP might run a candidate for Prez and split the Pan-Green vote.

[jaichind]

To filter out the effect of turnout, it is interesting to compare the vote share of the Pan-Blue and Pan-Green blocs as a percentage of the electorate.

              Pan-Blue          Pan-Green
2000        49.7%              33.0%
2004        40.1%              40.2%
2008        44.6%              31.7%
2012        40.5%              33.9%
2016        29.1%              37.2%

It is clear that while the Pan-Green performance is certainly above average but not too way out the ordinary.  It is the Pan-Blue vote that is way lower than historical norm. 

[jaichind]

This story about a Taiwanese singer that was forced to apologize to China for waving the Taiwanese flag on Korean tv, which went viral on election day, might have helped Tsai.

Yes.  This is the 周子瑜 (Chou Tzu-yu) fiasco which I mentioned before.  I am pretty sure this swung around 1%-2% of vote toward the DPP mostly by pushing up DPP turnout and depressing KMT turnout.  The entire story is a bit complex and involves what I call opportunistic nationalism.

The story really starts with a singer and entertainer called 黃安 (Huang An)



who is from Taiwan Province.  He was quite active on the entertainment circuit on Taiwan in the 1990s and was generally pro-DPP and appeared in several DPP rallies.  But toward the end of the 1990s he had a falling out with the Taiwan entertainment establishment and decided to move with his entire family to Mainland China where his entertainment career continued and had limited but real success.  At the same time he became, conveniently, a strong advocate for Chinese Unification even as he still perform time to time on Taiwan.  Last few years he has taken to "exposing" various entertainers from Taiwan Province that perform and make a good deal of money on Mainland China as having pro-Taiwan Independence beliefs.  Most of the entertainers he "exposed" did seem to be pro-DPP or pro-NPP and it seemed reasonable that the Mainland Chinese consumers are aware of these entertainer's position on Taiwan Independence so they can make a choice to weather to consume their entertainment product.  As a result all these entertainers did see their career/revenue decline on Mainland China.  Many say that Huang does this more to make up for the fact that he himself was for Taiwan Independence back in the 1990s before his "transformation."

But a couple of weeks ago, he went too far.  He decided to "expose" one 周子瑜  (Chou Tzu-yu) for being pro Taiwan Independence



Who is 16 year old girl who is from Taiwan Province but is currently a member of a Korean Girl band that performs a good part of its circuit on Mainland China.  His proof was that there are several photos with her holding the ROC and ROK flags.  There were also several cases where she filled in "Taiwan" on where she is from.   This of course is a bum rap as almost all Unification supports on Taiwan Province also identify with ROC as well. It is those that are for Taiwan Independence that tend to reject the ROC flag.  In fact the Tsai 2016 campaign is the first DPP campaign where its candidate does seem to embrace the ROC flag as an attempt to move toward the middle ground on this topic.

Huang "exposing" Chou seems to have added pressure on the band she belongs which is managed by a Korean company JYP which has vast economic links to the Mainland China market.  So JYP mostly to save itself decided to pressure Chou to release a video where she announced that "Taiwan is a part of China and I am proud to be Chinese" but done in a way to make it clear she was being pressured the day before the election.  

https://youtu.be/t57URqSp5Ew

This provoked a very negative reaction on Taiwan social media and was denounced by both the pan-Blue and Pan-Green camps.   On Mainland China most of the social media felt that Huang went too far but the radical nationalist fringe came out to back Huang.  This then provoked a "social media war" between the Mainland China youth and Taiwan youth.   To be fair,  JYP should also take a lot of the blame for this.  The PRC government clearly did not ask for this sort of "confession" from her.  It was JYP that decided to push their own employee to do something like this to humor, so they think, the PRC regime. 

It is clear that Huang clearly blew up the current situation between Mainland China and Taiwan and mostly added to the DPP landslide.  The word on Mainland China is the PRC authorities will be having a "chat" with Huang very soon to berate him for his clumsy actions which seems only to backfire him the PRC and himself.    The word also is that Huang recently have been breaking regulations on the types of commercials he is doing while performing and that the PRC regime will start to "look into" these possible transgressions.   There is already talk on Mainland China social media that Huang is really just a DPP double agent since his actions ensured the DPP victory.

DPP and Tsai was going to win one way or another but Huang added an extra nail in the KMT coffin.  I suspect Huang's music career on Mainland China will take a quick dive very soon.  

[jaichind]

Is there any info about who are the 1st and 2nd choices for President amongst Soong voters if he didn't compete?

I would say almost all of them would either not vote of voted KMT.  There are no exit polls so one cannot be 100% sure.  My "proof" mostly comes from the fact that the vote shares of all pan-Green parities on the party list votes versus the pan-Blue parties on the party list vote almost line up with the pan-Green (DPP) and pan-Blue (KMT+PFP) votes in the Presidential race.