That duck is evil. It even made the news back here in Fat City. It gave me The Fear, so I have no idea what it is all about.
[quote=“printlessfoot”][quote=“shiadoa”]
I think she could be higher still if she loses the Perm 
[/quote]
Maybe these two should swap their hairs.
[/quote]
Hair Off 2016
This could be a winner.
From today’s Apple Daily, ‘Which of the following candidate will you vote for the president if the election is held tomorrow?’
Eric Chu (KMT, Mayor of New Taipei City): 24.90%
DY Wu (KMT, Vice President): 8.08%
YH Chiang (KMT, Head of Executive Yuan): not included in this poll
YW Tsai (DPP, ex-DPP Chairwoman): 39.43%
ZC Su (DPP, DPP Chairman): 8.65%
Decision not available: 18.94%
Data summary:
Blue: 32.98%, Green: 48.08%
The distribution of votes in 2012 was Ma: 51.60%, Tsai: 45.63%, Song: 2.77%
My analysis:
In comparison with what Ma got in 2012, roughly 18 to 19% disappeared in this poll. This number is roughly the same as the undecided in this Apple poll. I believe that many blue supporters kept silent in this poll. On the contrary, because green camp gets 2% higher than what Tsai got in 2012, I believe that almost all green supporters have voiced their choice.
To my knowledge, this is the first time that the green ever had lead the blue in such clear margin in the media polls for the presidential election. Another difference between KMT and DPP shown in this poll is that DPP has had a clear presidential candidate, that is Tsai, but KMT still hasn’t.
Chu, Wu, and Chiang are all potential candidates. Currently Chu is the favorite of the majority of KMT members. However Ma have been grooming Chiang proactively to become his heir. Both Chu and Chiang are passive type. They are waiting for the power struggle in the back stage to decide their fate. The decision will not be reached until the result of 2014 mayor election is known. KMT party machine will have very limited time left to groom their candidate.
Wu is an active type but he is Taiwanese. So he is already out. Unfortunately he is also a believer of fortune teller. He consulted with a famous one in HK and was told that he shall become a king someday. Street rumor says that both he and his wife were very happy about that prophecy. Will Wang’s doom make him think twice?
That just doesn’t make sense to me. “We lost with this strategy once, but let’s trying to the exact same thing and see how that works.” That speaks to a party that is out of ideas.
However, if I were going to vote DPP and were given a choice of only Tsai or Su, I’d go with Tsai. That doesn’t mean there aren’t better options out there, though. (Look south.)
[quote=“Hokwongwei”]That just doesn’t make sense to me. “We lost with this strategy once, but let’s trying to the exact same thing and see how that works.” That speaks to a party that is out of ideas.
However, if I were going to vote DPP and were given a choice of only Tsai or Su, I’d go with Tsai. That doesn’t mean there aren’t better options out there, though. (Look south.)[/quote]
If I had to vote DPP I’d vote for Chen Shui-bian. I figure it can’t get any worse in terms of corruption, graft and cross strait / foreign relations. At least I know what I’ll be getting into…
[quote=“TheGingerMan”]That duck is evil. It even made the news back here in Fat City. It gave me The Fear, so I have no idea what it is all about.
[/quote]
You are right…Ducks are Evil.
The election was not too close to call. That was what the DPP was saying. The internal DPP poll as quoted by former DPP chairman Lin Yi-Hsiung had Chen trailing 45-55 which is 1.5 million ballots. That matches what the KMT poll and all other so-called pan blue polls said. Even China Times which was very green all along at that time had Lien ahead by 8 points which is over a million on March 18. They never publicized the results by the way.
The alleged incident that took place in Tainan narrowed the gap to 53-47 in favor of Lien and Soong which was a gap of 800,000-900,000 ballots, so the future sore loser of the election Lien said the election should go on. The exit poll the next day also spat out around 53-47 3 times the next day in favor of Lien, but was later changed by altering Taiwan’s population density to 50-50 to meet the political realities of the situation. That is, late exit pollster Warren Mitofsky had to lower Northern Taiwan’s population density to decrease pan blue support, and then increased Southern Taiwan’s population density to increase DPP support in the exit poll.
Then the next day as the Central Election Commission delayed the tally results by about 2 hours and reports of fraud started rolling in around the country, Chen won by his self-predicted and AIT backed poll of a whopping 29,000 ballots or so. Of course, that was what they were saying all along, so it must have been true. Don’t believe those self-deceiving pan blue polls or the internal DPP poll. Believe the public DPP poll which said Chen was leading before the incident in Tainan, but actually lost support after it occurred. If you want further confirmation of the truth, just ask anyone who works in the AIT office. They will tell you their 100% correct and neutral information says the shooting was real and that Chen was winning to begin with.
If you know the behind the scenes story of how the DPP got into power in Taiwan (with Lee Tung-Hui’s help), you will know that it will be very difficult for the DPP to ever re-gain power unless the current KMT Chairman deliberately wants his own party out of power by splitting the vote, and/or using the KMT party to rig votes against a more popular independent candidate such as James Soong in 2000.
Ma Ying-Jeou might not be well liked in the KMT, but he is not going to deliberately try to help the DPP get into power by diluting and pan blue vote as Lee Tung-Hui did. In other words, Ma Ying-Jeou is not green like Lee Tung-Hui. Wang Jin-Ping would have done something like Lee if he had gotten hold of the KMT party and presidency himself, but he failed to rig the 2005 KMT Chairmanship election and the Chen Shui-Bian government failed to prevent Ma from running for the 2008 election due to his special funds case.
So while, the ruling party approval ratings are dismal, at the end of the day, the vote is about 54-46 in favor of the KMT party without any funny business going on, and considering that the KMT party is not going to allow the DPP to cheat them out of power when it controls the Central Election Commission, then the DPP’s chances are not that good.
In other words, they have to win the real way, and they have not done that yet. They only got there by cheating in the past, and those days are gone until another Lee Tung-Hui comes along. Localization via election fraud as introduced by the KMT party since there were local elections (fraud, not localization), and further advanced (fraud and localization) by the Democratic Progressive Party for a new age of Taiwan’s democracy.
[quote=“Mr He”]Well, 2004 was the perfect election campaign and the polls had it too close to call. While I do not see the shooting as any more than a mere shooting, I think it got voters out that would otherwise have stayed at home. NOT THAT I have A PROBLEM WITH THAT. Mind you, I was there back then, and I recall us all thinking that Lian Zhan/James Soong would win in the end, as the last polls before the blackout period pointed in that direction.
As some blue tencenter posted somewhere, it’s a big deal, the KMT will trot someone else out, and thow a lot of glitzy marketing (along with the worst money politics/ vote buying/gangsterism on the local level they can buy).[/quote]
An interesting and relevant article in today’s Taipei Times:
Editorial: DPP burdened by aging leadership
One of the DPP’s strong points is that it appealed more to younger people, who in the long run are destined to take over Taiwan from the aging old guard. But as this editorial indicates, the DPP is gradually losing that advantage, and that could have consequences in upcoming elections.
[quote=“Dog’s_Breakfast”]An interesting and relevant article in today’s Taipei Times:
Editorial: DPP burdened by aging leadership
One of the DPP’s strong points is that it appealed more to younger people, who in the long run are destined to take over Taiwan from the aging old guard. But as this editorial indicates, the DPP is gradually losing that advantage, and that could have consequences in upcoming elections.[/quote]
Time for Chen Wei-ting to take up his destined role as a party leader.
The 2004 presidential election… I was here and I remember. The polls were very close, and there were no public polls the last week before the election. They have a blackout, so no poll results are made public.
The night of the voting, I recall it very well. My then wife was watching television downstairs, and she was rather despondent, coming from a moderately DPP leaning town. She kept on telling me that the results showed that President Chen would lose.
I thought that weird. I was working late, so I had no time for the pan-blue gibberish being spewed by the “media”. No, I was on the CEC web site, and it showed from the first minute a small but decisive lead for President Chen. That is right, the source everybody was using for their forecasts and what have you not showed that Chen Shuibian was winning, and it was not in doubt at any given time.
Note, the CEC always showed a higher portion of votes counted than the cable channels, IE they gave you the raw pro-DPP winning figures. If you watched TVBullShit or whatever loony blue FOX channel you prefer to get your delusions from, then the victory was stolen, however not if you actually watched the vote count in real time. I guess that our little betelnut was not old enough to be chewed back then, so cannot remember.
Counting votes in Taiwan is a very public process, and no evidence of tampering has ever been found. And why should there be any, the KMT usually buys its victories anyways. Taiwan can be 49.7% blue and 50.3% green, it was in 2004, and if Ma keeps it up, it will be that again, no matter what people say.
But the blues never learn, and they will consider any election they do not win for stolen by some country bumpkins.
The votes are bought before the election not after it. Just go to any region of Taiwan outside Taipei you can figure that out yourself.
OK, so how exactly is that vote buying supposed to work?
I give you the chance to prove me wrong - emphasis on prove!
Let’s say I was pro-DPP and you offered me 1,000 NT$ to vote KMT instead, why would I not simply vote DPP after all since it’s a secret vote?
“Vote buying” only works for those who sympathise with one party already. And what is so wrong about offering senior citizens who would otherwise stay home a ride to the polling station? Isn’t that what the DPP does to fill “ketagalan” Blvd. for their rallies?
if you are capable of thinking that, they wouldn’t even bother buying your vote, hence your complete pretend ignorance regarding the issue.
vote buying targets the old and the traditional, who believe if you receive other’s money you must do as you requested, out of a traditional sense of duty. They don’t really grasp how accepting the money would hurt them down the road, and sometimes are in a position where the money is needed. Since the elderly is a large portion of the population and unfortunately often among the poor, vote buying works very well.
[quote=“hansioux”][quote=“hsinhai78”]
Let’s say I was pro-DPP and you offered me 1,000 NT$ to vote KMT instead, why would I not simply vote DPP after all since it’s a secret vote?
[/quote]
if you are capable of thinking that, they wouldn’t even bother buying your vote, hence your complete pretend ignorance regarding the issue.
vote buying targets the old and the traditional, who believe if you receive other’s money you must do as you requested, out of a traditional sense of duty. They don’t really grasp how accepting the money would hurt them down the road, and sometimes are in a position where the money is needed. Since the elderly is a large portion of the population and unfortunately often among the poor,
vote buying works very well
.[/quote]
Which is why both parties routinely engage in it.
[quote=“hansioux”]
vote buying targets the old and the traditional, who believe if you receive other’s money you must do as you requested, out of a traditional sense of duty. They don’t really grasp how accepting the money would hurt them down the road, and sometimes are in a position where the money is needed. Since the elderly is a large portion of the population and unfortunately often among the poor, vote buying works very well.[/quote]
Also, the old timers have seen too much to put much stock in abstract concepts like supposedly secret government ballots.
Traditionally, you would be asked to chop the vote in a certain place, IE so many ppl would chop the ear of the candidate, so many people would chop the nose and so and so on. As the counting of the vote is public, observers would count up where many chops on different places as a control of how well the vote buying worked.
The changes the blue bunglers protested against in 2004 - despite voting for those changes only months before - made it much harder to check the efficincy of vote buying, as they restricted where a voting chop could be placed.
OK, so how exactly is that vote buying supposed to work?
I give you the chance to prove me wrong - emphasis on prove!
Let’s say I was pro-DPP and you offered me 1,000 NT$ to vote KMT instead, why would I not simply vote DPP after all since it’s a secret vote?
“Vote buying” only works for those who sympathise with one party already. And what is so wrong about offering senior citizens who would otherwise stay home a ride to the polling station? Isn’t that what the DPP does to fill “ketagalan” Blvd. for their rallies?[/quote]
I know you will be horrified to hear this, Hsinhai, but I know a blue family who received a “vote for this DPP councilor and win NT$1000” scheme (because they got the phone call when I was in the room) and were considering accepting the money but voting KMT anyway. (I don’t know what they ended up considering.) So yes, vote-buying = very very common
in both parties
, but as to whether it works… 
That’s a bit crude and may have been a ruse. These things happen at very close personal levels often through associations such as temple, fishing or farming. That’s why it’s so hard to break as no one wants to rat out a close associate. No one is going to vote buy over the phone.
The strength of the KMT machine is that it’s fused with interpersonal relationships at the local level. It’s actually a perfect model for the control of a society like the Taiwanese one. The local whatevers be it temples or whatever they know a large group of locals, and they have the manpower in some cases helped by Jiaotou I would think. They meet face to face with the voters they are responsible for and due to the personal bond, which here counts for more than say the abstract idea of rule of law or whatever, they are able to ensure a high degree of compliance with the scheme. I heard from my ex’s family that it was persons going around doing the business face to face.
Also, the LY elections in 2001 was at the time lauded as some of the cleanest here ever. Why was that? Simple, shortly before the election, the vote captains known to engage in vote buying were rounded up and held until the election was over.
I know someone whose family is involved in it down in Pingdong. Come election time, they’re out delivering red envelopes or offering favors in return for a green vote.
Both sides do it, and it’s unlikely to be stopped anytime soon.