TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — When Taiwanese-speaking nationalists took over the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) at the dawn of the 1990s, the political battlelines became more ethnically charged as the decade wore on. The DPP’s power base, originally in the north, shifted to the south, though in the last few years there are indications they may be making inroads again in the north.
Even from the early days of Kuomintang (KMT) rule in Taiwan, the KMT had built an alliance of sorts between the 49ers (those whose families fled the Chinese civil war and arrived in or around 1949), the Hakka, and among the Indigenous tribes. This alliance has even earlier roots going back to the Manchurian Qing Empire colonial era, as the Hakka and Indigenous were heavily outnumbered by the Hoklo (Taiwanese) speakers and often warred with them, though the Hoklo speakers were also prone to fight among themselves, often based on whether their families came from Quanzhou or Zhangzhou in Fujian.
The KMT was also able to get a sizeable chunk of the Hoklo population through their control of the local patronage factions, and more recently, as the power of the factions has waned, by those who have business connections with China, social conservatives, and those nostalgic for the economic boom times of the late martial law era.
Younger Taiwanese are increasingly rejecting these historical animosities and alliances. There are, however, still enough older voters who keep to these voting patterns.
For example, in Miaoli, around three-quarters of Hakka speakers identify as KMT according to a June poll. No opposition party has won the county commission in Miaoli for 72 years.
Similarly, in places like Hualian and Taitung, with high Indigenous populations, the KMT is strong, and in the 2020 race it was considered a major victory for the DPP when they managed to get only one-third of the reserved Indigenous legislative seats. Areas in north Taiwan with large 49er populations, especially Taipei City, also lean KMT.
This means there are large blocs of voters who will never vote for the other side, and not necessarily for any reason to do with ideology.
The rise of the New Power Party
For awhile now, however, I’ve suspected that many KMT voters are voting KMT more due to dislike of the DPP than out of loyalty for the KMT, and would consider any option as long as it was not the DPP. In 2014 and 2016 the New Power Party (NPP), a new pan-green party, did fairly well in areas not normally considered pan-green.
In a legislative by-election in deep blue Miaoli Hakka country, the NPP ran Sunflower luminary Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), who was a local. Until he was forced out of the race due to scandal, he was ahead in the polls.
Even today, the NPP’s support is strongest in heavily Hakka Hsinchu and Miaoli, and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) is also strongest in more pan-blue areas of the country. The exception is the Kaohsiung-based Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP), but they barely have a presence north of Taichung.
Recently, an outlet called RW News has been asking some questions in their polls that not only suggest my suspicion was correct, but I had grossly underestimated the phenomenon. However, there are a couple of caveats.
These polls are collected through a series of digital sources, including text messages, emails, social media and “other,” which may under represent some demographics, such as the elderly. They claim, however, that their margin of error is around 2% with 95% accuracy after running it through a five-step process.
Another problem is that they have only run these polls in six northern locales so far, leaving out the south. They also include the TPP as “pan-blue,” which some in the TPP would dispute, though I’d agree they lean pan-blue more than pan-green.
However, even if the margin of error is bigger than they claim, they still paint a broad strokes picture that is very dramatic, and has good and bad news for all the big parties.
The results are in, and by far the biggest group of voters "hates" the DPP
Let’s start with Taipei in a poll released on July 6. On the pan-green side, 23.1% of respondents said they “just like the DPP” (只喜歡民進黨), 11.35% said they “just hated the KMT” (只討厭國民黨) and 7.12% indicated they “just hated the TPP” (只討厭民眾黨).
The picture is very different on the pan-blue side, with 33.75% “just hated the DPP,” 5.22% “just liked the TPP,” and 5.12% “just liked the KMT.”
The same poll found that 27.68% identified as DPP supporters, 21.77% as KMT and 11.63% as TPP. By comparison, a Taiwan Brain Trust poll from March found party identity in Taipei as 31.2% DPP, 21.9% KMT and 15.5% TPP, which is roughly in the same ballpark as the July RW poll.
In New Taipei in a poll released on July 20, 21.43% of pan-green identifiers “just like the DPP”, 10.15% “just hate the KMT,” and 5.29% “just hate the TPP.” For pan-blues, 38.24% “just hate the DPP,” 3.38% “just like the KMT,” and 3.17% “just like the TPP.”
In Taoyuan, Hsinchu City, Miaoli and Ilan “just hate the DPP” was over 30%, with Hsinchu City the highest at 38.39%. In all of them, “just like the KMT” was under 4%, except Miaoli at 6.24%.
The margin between “just like the DPP” and “just hate the KMT” was a bit closer than in Taipei and New Taipei, but “just like the DPP” remained higher in all of them. The exception was Miaoli where “just hate the KMT” at 17.31% was higher than “just like the DPP” at 9.5%.
In Taoyuan and Hsinchu, the “just like the TPP” crowd polled higher than the KMT, but were still in the single digits. I remain curious to see what the numbers from the south show, but in all of these polls “just hate the DPP” was far and away the highest polling group.
What does this mean for the parties?
In this context, the TPP’s drift to a more light blue stance makes considerable electoral sense. DPP voters are more loyal to their party, and are harder to peel off for reasons I went into at length in a previous column the TPP simply can’t overtake the KMT in this election.
However, as the party grows in resources, talent and politicians with name recognition, the more possible it will become for the party to be a viable alternative to the KMT.
For the KMT, these polls are more bad news than good. The good news is they still have the resources, talent, and candidates with name recognition to be present in nearly every race where they are competitive and have a big “hate the DPP” voter base to tap.
But, in the long-term, just hating the other guys is not a viable base for a party as other options appear. In this context, KMT Chair Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) efforts to move the party closer to the mainstream ideologically make a lot of electoral sense, but as I have explored in previous columns, he has an uphill battle on several fronts.
For the DPP, the higher loyalty is a plus, but that the biggest group of voters "hates" the party is not a good sign. DPP Chair Tsai Ing-wen's (蔡英文) efforts have made some inroads in places like Hsinchu City, Taoyuan, and Keelung, but clearly the party still has a long way to go.
