TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — The Taipei mayoral race is turning into a real nail biter. With three of the four directly elected presidents in Taiwan having previously served as the capital’s mayor, the stakes are potentially high.
Officially there are a staggering 12 candidates running. In spite of having shelled out a small fortune to register to run, nine of the candidates have barely registered with the public, with the best polling at 0.3%.
Barring an unexpected breakout by one of the smaller candidates, the race is now between the Kuomintang’s (KMT) Wayne Chiang (蔣萬安), Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and independent Vivian Huang (黃珊珊). There is a very real chance any of them could win.
There is some polling out by partisan outlets that show their candidate way out ahead, but more non-partisan polling shows them all very close, often with all three within the margin of error. This column will focus on data from the latest My-Formosa poll, because it has regularly conducted the same survey and has granular data to examine.
It shows Chiang ahead at 29.6%, Huang second at 28.1%, Chen at 27.8%, undecideds at 10.5%, and the remainder either following less popular candidates or planning not to vote, or spoil their ballots. The three front-runners are well within the 3% margin of error, making it a dead heat.
For any of them to change those numbers in their favor, one of two things will have to happen. Either they peel off the supporters of other candidates, or they win over the largest number of undecideds.
'Dump-save' scenario
In theory, the candidates could win over voters from other candidates through good plans, rational appeals and good outreach. This can, and will happen, but it is a tough route that will most likely work with only those whose support for the other candidate is fairly weak — unless a candidate can come up with an as-yet unforeseen “killer” issue and dominate it.
A more likely scenario, and what the local press is constantly speculating on, is what in local political terminology is starkly termed “dump-save” (棄保), which in English is blandly labelled as strategic voting. This happens when, fearing a voter’s preferred candidate is going to lose, they switch their vote to another candidate that is less objectionable than the other one who might win.
This is what happened in the 2018 Taipei race, which is why the press is so obsessed with it happening this time. The DPP candidate, Pasuya Yao (姚文智), ended up with only 11.29% of the vote, far lower than the percentage of the population that would normally support the DPP.
Yao’s supporters “dumped” him to “save” Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) because they either preferred him to the KMT candidate, or simply hated the KMT. There was one crucial difference between that election and this one: Yao looked like a loser from day one, and never gained traction.
Three strong front-runners
That is not the case this time. As things stand, the three frontrunners are all holding strong, so there is no incentive, yet, for any voters to dump-save on their preferred candidate.
That hasn’t stopped the highly partisan media outlets from trying, by portraying their candidate as way out front and strong. I suspect they are attempting to get the independent Huang voters to dump-save her.
It clearly isn’t working, if anything, momentum has been trending her way. For dump-save to happen, one of the candidates would have to clearly start falling behind the other two.
That could happen. Campaigns sometimes lose momentum.
This campaign has been full of attacks and fighting between the campaigns. Most won’t be remembered when voting on Nov.26.
It is possible, however, that either a big scandal occurs, or a pattern of smaller attacks changes the perception of a candidate. This sometimes happens when a pattern emerges that shows a candidate with some flaw, perhaps too arrogant, too weak, incompetent or something otherwise distasteful to voters.
There have been some successes by campaigns on this front, for example portraying Chiang as a lightweight and Chen as being overbearing and opaque, but so far not enough to shake their core of support. This bears watching, but so far, dump-save just hasn’t been a factor yet, in spite of hyperventilating local press commentary.
Undecideds could be key
So far the press has, curiously, almost entirely ignored this. It looks like the candidates will have to win over the 10.5% of undecideds to gain the edge. This comes down to good, old-fashioned campaigning.
Good communications and outreach are critical to reach these voters, as these people aren’t as likely to show up at party rallies. This is where coming up with a good platform that addresses voter concerns can be very important.
Being articulate in the press will also be a major factor. A dash of charisma doesn’t hurt either.
In a race this tight, the basics will need to be executed well. Get-out-the-vote campaigns, rallying the base and flooding the zone with tissue packets that have the candidate’s face on them.
Of course, something big could come along that upends the race. But at this point, it looks like things like the perception of the candidates, campaign professionalism, communication, execution and smooth logistics could end up being deciding factors.
Each of the candidates has some serious strengths and weaknesses. Tune in to my next columns as we look into who the players are, and who I think the structure of this race favors to win.
