TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A recent poll asking respondents in Taiwan to indicate their preferred political party showed that more than half of voters would not support either the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) or the Kuomintang (KMT), Taiwan’s two major political parties.
The data was released by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation (TPOF) on Thursday (June 15). The same day, RW Media released its own poll showing the Democratic Progressive Party’s Lai Ching-te (賴清德) remains the favorite for Taiwan’s 2024 presidential election, while the Kuomintang’s (KMT) Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) remained behind Taiwan People’s Party candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
The results have been called a major bombshell by pollsters, as the TPP’s Ko continues to outpace the KMT’s Hou, and the post #MeToo political environment appears to shake voters' faith in major political parties.
The parties
The TPOF poll was carried out on June 12 and 13 (after the numerous stories of sexual abuse involving senior Taiwan political leaders and other prominent figures emerged) and the results were released on Thursday (June 15). The TPOF poll asked respondents to indicate their preferred political party out of all that are registered in Taiwan, and surveyed just over 1,000 people via landline phone.
The three top polling parties were the DPP at 24.6%, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) at 22.2%, and the KMT at 20.4%, results that will be a sure upset to the KMT, with its membership of about 350,000, versus the TPP’s approximately 8,000. This is the second positive polling result for the TPP and its presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) in recent weeks, who was shown to edge out the KMT’s candidate Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) for the first time in a poll released late May.
The unaligned minor New Power Party that was formed in 2015 by members of the Sunflower movement polled a healthy 7.2%, while the Taiwan Statebuilding Party TSP polled at 6.3%. The remainder was made up by a sizeable 17.5% of respondents who said they would not support any political party, the 1.2% who supported all other parties in Taiwan, and the 0.7% who did not know who they would support.
According to a TPOF press release, the polls reflect the changing political environment in post-#MeToo Taiwan, and said the result will send a shockwave through Taiwan’s political scene.
This is the first time in the political history of Taiwan’s party-political system that voter support for the top three political parties is above 20% each, and the gap between them no more than 4.2% at the largest.
Political analyst and regular contributor to Taiwan News, Courtney Donovan Smith (石東文) said that TPOF polling has consistently shown higher support for the TPP than other organizations, but the result is nevertheless useful for observing developing trends.
“This not only shows a strong uptick for the TPP, it also shows big jumps in support for the NPP and TSP. Considering the large jump in #MeToo cases, especially in the DPP and KMT but also cases in the TPP and New Power Party."
“It is not surprising to see an uptick in support for third parties and frustration with the traditional two main parties," Smith said.
The candidates
Meanwhile, an RW News poll also released on Thursday reported voter support for presidential candidates, with DPP candidate Lai leading at 37.76%, followed by the TPP’s Ko at 21.29%, and the KMT’s Hou at 21.87%. 6.19% of respondents indicated a preference for a candidate other than those three, while 2.89% said they would not vote.
The poll also showed that Lai lost 6.79 percentage points among 30 to 39-year-old voters, which pollsters attributed to the impact of sexual misconduct scandals (that began among the DPP). Not only limited to Lai, poll results showed that support for this age bracket represented the biggest losses for each of the other two parties’ candidates.
Hou’s support among female voters aged 30-39 dropped below 10% for the first time to 7.91% from 14.78%. Pollsters attributed the significant drop in support to the New Taipei City Kindergarten drugging scandal that has seen Hou’s attention to the campaign trail divided, as he responds to the situation in his capacity as New Taipei City Mayor.
In contrast, polling showed support for Ko among all age groups has grown. Support for Ko among those living in Taipei, New Taipei, Keelung, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, and Miaoli all increased by approximately 10%.
The RW News poll was carried out by professors from the Political Science Department of National Taiwan University, and polled just over 12,000 people via internet survey between June 6 and 10.
