Taiwan's 2024 Presidential Election

They can pronounce it in Taigi, and make it TBT, but since I haven’t heard Ke do that, it’s TMD for now.

Surely should be mzd

I think you are right.

Should be lol.

Ah I see what’s happened here

Do you have a link for that?

Might not be a bad thing really

Saw this article on reddit, no idea if there’s any truth to it or not.

Makes sense , they are worried that Hou is a Lee Teng Hui so are nervous to back him

Actually I think Bonnie Glaser has no particular insight here. She is just throwing out an opinion

I don’t think she is correct. I think a lot has changed from the past. All Taiwan leaders are going to be restricted on what they can do via cross straits by Washington. Nobody will be allowed to go too independent or too close to China. But I think Washington will welcome if a leader could manage healthy exchanges

The piece that has stuck with me is an April 2020 post by Batto following the Kaohsiung City by-election. This was after the DPP lost the mayorship to Han, and then Han was recalled. The KMT ran a terrible candidate for the 2020 race (remember Jane Lee and her plagiarism scandal?) and she got utterly thrashed. Perfect conditions, you’d think, for the TPP to shine in the south, in its biggest city, right? Think again. Ko’s party received (wait for it) 4.1% of the vote from the good people of Kaohsiung. Here’s Batto’s analysis:

Quick note about the TPP. This was a terrible result for them. This election was almost a best-case scenario for the TPP. The KMT candidate was clearly incompetent, which might have encouraged anti-DPP voters to look for another option. In addition, there has been a corruption scandal in recent weeks, featuring DPP legislators, KMT legislators, and the NPP party chair. The TPP was the only party not tarnished, which plays right into their main discourse that the other parties are all corrupt. I thought they might get double digits with an outside chance that they might get nearly as many votes as the KMT. Instead, they got a meager 4.1%. We don’t know who unhappy and disgruntled voters turned to, but, given the results, it seems most likely that they supported Chen. They certainly didn’t support the TPP.

Source: Kaohsiung mayoral by-election | Frozen Garlic

Guy

Yeah it makes sense, they don’t have much grass roots or presence in the South. They have minuscule resources compared to other parties. So would make sense did badly.

But he didn’t say because was lack of cross straits position. Or maybe I’m missing something

According to Bonnie Glaser, the answer seems to be: “not.” She does not appear to be very happy:

“This is not the first time that Mayor Ko has twisted the meaning of my words to suggest that I support him,” Glaser said, without elaborating. “This is unconscionable behavior and disrespectful to me as a scholar.”

Guy

The 3 latest polls pushes the DPP further ahead, and maintains the majority in the legislature.

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I think it’s way too early to call.

Meanwhile, the KMT candidate Hou—who has been extremely quiet at the outset of the campaign, leading to some whispers if he may be in over his head—has started to be more assertive, stating recently that he’s for nuclear power and that he is for the death penalty.

It looks like he is staking his ground off on the right . . .

Guy

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Quite interesting. Really close, hard to guess who will win. Seems that Taiwan now has a legitimate third force

Again I think this is way too early to call, as I suspect voters will bail out of the “third force” part for the presidential vote. The party list vote though will be interesting. Can the TPP, a party that apparently stands for nothing other than “we are not like the other guys” actually stick?

And yes I know that @OrangeOrganics will naturally disagree. :grin:

Guy

A third force build on a cult of personality? Regardless, third parties won’t survive more than 3 election cycles in the current voting system. Unless Taiwan’s sovereignty is no longer the main concern of the voters, in that case, we won’t have any more elections either, so party plurality would be even more moot than the present.

I mean there is nothing to say that. TPP is ahead with the non-alligned voters.

They stand for more competent technocracy and a moderate approach to cross-straits politics. Again, they are way ahead with the young and educated. So unless there is something wrong with Taiwan’s education system, seems that they dont stand for ‘nothing’

That’s a bit harsh! I can also envision a future in which elections in Taiwan continue AND the regime that continues to threaten us does not.

Dare to dream! :grin:

Guy

Huang Shan Shan got 25% of the votes in Taipei.
The lady in Hsinchu won.
Seems they are here to stay