TPP gained votes from neither KMT nor DPP: scholar

Taipei, Jan. 19 (CNA) The votes received by the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) during the recent presidential and legislative elections did not come from core supporters of the two major political parties but from those who did not vote in 2022 or "lent votes" to Tsai Ing-wen in 2020, according to a young Taiwanese scholar.

The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom - Global Innovation Hub hosted a post-election discussion on Friday in Taipei, featuring Sie Da-wun (謝達文), a young scholar who specializes in political sociology.

Sie contended that the victory of the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in the 2020 presidential election, in which she received 8.17 million votes, "included many borrowed votes."

In 2020, the election was greatly influenced by the Hong Kong democracy movement and by the fact that many nonpartisan voters did not see Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the KMT nominee, as a competent presidential candidate, he said.

Rebuffing the contention that the DPP "lost a lot of votes" in 2024 compared to 2020, Sie said view overlooks how the electorate voted in the 2022 local elections.

In terms of the stats, in the 2020 presidential election, 42 percent of eligible voters voted for Tsai, only 27 percent voted for the KMT's Han, and 31 percent either did not vote or voted for James Soong (宋楚瑜), the third contender in the 2020 presidential election. In the 2024 election, the respective numbers for the DPP and the KMT were 29 and 24 percent.

On the face of it, the DPP lost big, Sie said, but if one looks at the 2022 local elections, the party only received 25 percent of eligible voters, while 45 percent voted for parties other than the two main parties or did not vote.

The KMT also "cannot be said to have hemorrhaged" support as it received 24 percent in 2024 and a not-so-different 27 percent in 2020, he said.

Sie said Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) probably only successfully tapped into voters who supported neither the KMT nor the DPP from the start, "who in 2024 found a political home in Ko."

He presented a chart showing that in Taiwan's 368 townships in the 2024 presidential election Ko "gained above-average votes" only in those where in the 2012 presidential election the KMT's Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) performed badly and where the DPP's Tsai also performed averagely.

He argued that Ko only gained votes in those townships where the KMT's traditional party machine had already waned in 2012 and where they were not convinced by the DPP, as in townships that were highly supportive of Tsai's DPP in 2012, Ko did not fare well.

Another highlight was that TPP supporters branded themselves as being "tired of spats over cross-strait relations and wanting to focus on bread and butter issues." Sie did not agree, arguing that it was not true when TPP supporters said only the TPP cared about housing prices and wage issues as both the KMT and the DPP offered their own policies in those areas.

These voters "relegated issues about sovereignty to the category of ideological spats, and consider them fundamentally opposed to more pragmatic matters," Sie said.

The young scholar argued this is actually "something that needs to be explained" rather than explanatory, suggesting it is a remnant of Taiwan's political history whereby some people tend to accept such dichotomies while overlooking the fact that daily-life influencing policies are also based on ideals and political ideologies.

After all, if Taiwanese people really care so little about sovereignty and ideological issues, the 2020 election would not have been greatly swayed by what happened in Hong Kong, he said.