Recall, referendum failures bring DPP edge to an end: Japanese scholar

Taipei, Aug. 24 (CNA) The decade-long political advantage of Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has come to an end, according to Yoshiyuki Ogasawara, an honorary chair professor at Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University (NTHU).

Referring to the mass recall campaign waged mostly against opposition Kuomintang (KMT) lawmakers and a referendum on nuclear power, Ogasawara said the 2025 "summer battle" ended with "a major defeat for the DPP and a major victory for the opposition parties."

This indicates that the DPP's relative advantage from 2014 to 2024 has ended, Ogasawara wrote in Japanese in a Facebook post on Saturday.

During that period, the DPP won all three presidential elections (in 2016, 2020, 2024) and control of the Legislature twice (2016 and 2020).

The Japanese political science scholar said the DPP must reconstruct its core narratives of "resisting China and safeguarding Taiwan" and a "nuclear-free homeland."

However, opposition parties "cannot rely only on being anti-DPP," he said, as that alone may not bring a transfer of power.

Saturday's referendum, initiated by the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) and supported by the Kuomintang (KMT), asked voters whether they wanted to restart the Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant, which was shut down in May. The DPP opposed the measure.

The referendum resulted in more than 4.34 million votes in favor (74.2 percent), against more than 1.51 million votes against (25.8 percent), but the votes in favor failed to hit the threshold of 5 million (or 25 percent of eligible voters) needed for the initiative to pass.

Turnout stood at 29.5 percent, down from 41.1 percent in the 2021 referendums, when four questions were put to voters.

Saturday also saw public recall votes against seven KMT lawmakers, who all kept their seats by relatively wide margins.

Some 33.9 percent of voters opted to recall the lawmakers, compared with 66.1 percent voting against -- a wider margin than the results in July's first round that targeted 24 KMT legislators.

Ogasawara said overall turnout in the seven districts was 49.3 percent, compared with 56.1 percent in July, figures he said could be interpreted as showing a decline in willingness to vote by DPP supporters.

The outcome of the recalls had already been decided on July 24, when the first wave of recalls against the two dozen KMT lawmakers all failed, Ogasawara said.

He said the KMT had "high morale" on Saturday while DPP supporters were "uninterested."

Ogasawara suggested that the referendum result showed an "overwhelming majority" of Taiwanese society would like the ruling party to change its "nuclear-free homeland" policy.

Opposition to nuclear energy was stronger in the 2010s, but has weakened in recent years due to high electricity demand from semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) facilities, delays in renewable energy, and increased reliance on thermal power, Ogasawara said.

He also noted that concerns over environmental and corruption issues surrounding solar panels had raised further public unease.

According to NTHU, Ogasawara has been "researching Taiwanese politics for more than 30 years and has accurately predicted the results of Taiwan's general elections several times."