TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — All four public opinion polls released on the presidential race since mid-May have shown Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) in third place, behind Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) in second place, and Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Lai Ching-te (賴清德) in first place. Four straight polls over the course of a month send a clear and unmistakable message: Voters are abandoning Hou.
This is an astounding fall from grace. Hou held the crown as the most popular politician in Taiwan for four years, topped 80% in approval ratings, and won re-election as New Taipei mayor against DPP heavyweight Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in a landslide in November 2022.
It was expected that upon entering the presidential race, Hou's popularity would drop, as all candidates came under greater scrutiny, but the speed and scale of the drop were beyond what was expected. For example, Lai has also seen some shine come off his popularity once his campaign got underway, but it has by no means been a precipitous plunge.
The politics sections of local news outlets are full of articles and opinion pieces speculating on the party dumping Hou for another candidate. Others are speculating that this election will be a repeat of the Hsinchu City race last November, when voters opposed to the DPP and faced with a weak KMT candidate opted to go for ‘dump-save’ (棄保) strategic voting and backed the TPP’s Ann Kao (高虹安) to ‘save’ her chances of winning. She won, and the speculation is that Ko could benefit from the same effect.
Hou’s shambolic campaign
One week into Hou’s campaign, I wrote a column titled “Hou Yu-ih's puzzling Taiwan presidential campaign launch,” in which I laid out why his campaign launch was surprisingly feeble. Unlike his counterparts, Lai and Ko, he had not prepared for his campaign launch or anything resembling a platform, in spite of it being clear for some time that he was to become the KMT candidate. In that column, I wrote:
“Sliding poll numbers could also change the narrative if he drops far behind Ko. If the perception is he’s a loser with no hope, voters will not bother to seriously check him out in the fall.
Taiwanese voters are politically more aware than their counterparts in many other countries, and most are likely following it at least loosely at this point. If Hou fails to change the perception that he is just robotic HoHoGPT with zero substance, that will lead to his poll numbers dropping, which further re-enforces the idea that he will lose, leading to a downward spiral that gets harder and harder to reverse the longer it goes on.”
I ended the column with the line, “If he waits too long, it will be too little, too late.” He has not only failed to address any of those problems, he has dropped behind Ko in the polls, and so far my prediction of what would happen is starting to play out.
Unlike Ko and Lai, who had campaign teams and offices ready to launch when they were formally announced as candidates, Hou waited a full two weeks after his campaign launch before opening a small campaign “workshop” with a vague promise of opening a full office sometime in the future.
Kicking off a presidential campaign is the perfect opportunity to grab the spotlight and set the agenda and tone for the campaign. Usually that leads to a bump in the polls, creates a sense of momentum in the media, and a sense of purpose among supporters, but Hou did none of that and instead created a sense of being out of his depth and demoralizing his supporters.
Loudest critics within KMT
Nearly everyone, most loudly within the KMT, is decrying his total lack of clarity about his platform or what he stands for. Pan-blue musician Steven Liu (劉家昌), a big fan of the KMT’s 2020 candidate Daniel Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), expressed his disgust with Hou’s lack of substance: “He isn’t just a sack of straw (草包, ie, stupid), he’s a sack of straw without a single straw in it.”
Liu described Hou's speech to university students as being at “a junior high school level” and stated “that Hou flunked” during the entire 56-minute presentation, only putting forth two policies, subsidies for children aged zero to six and a peace agreement, which Liu suspected were cribbed from Terry Gou (郭台銘). He also said that if he had to choose between Lai and Hou, he would pick Lai because “at least I’ll know what will kill me,” but with Hou, “I’ll have no idea.” Ouch.
Liu is a Han fan, and many do not like Hou because they feel Hou undermined Han’s presidential campaign by refusing to head his New Taipei election committee or even campaign with him when he held rallies just down the road from Hou’s office, saying he was too busy doing his job as mayor. Both Hou and Han had just been elected as mayors of New Taipei and Kaohsiung respectively, and Hou’s comments were clearly a veiled attack on Han running away from his job so quickly to seek the presidency, a common complaint at the time.
Meanwhile, Terry Gou fans do not like Hou either. They feel that KMT Chair Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) decision to skip a primary and give final decision-making power to himself on who the KMT nominee would be was at the very least unfair, or at worst, rigged against Gou.
For any hope of winning, Hou needs to unify the party behind him and win over the Han and Gou fans. However, it appears he has barely lifted a finger trying.
Infighting and scheming
There are reports of infighting between Hou’s team and Eric Chu’s team about whose responsibility it is to create reconciliation between Hou, Han, and Gou, though both Chu and Hou deny that is the case. These reports were spread widely across media outlets, so it is not entirely clear if their denials are true, but in either case, the perception of chaos inside the KMT is spreading.
Some people who know Han have suggested that he would be open to helping Hou, only if Hou reached out to him. Han himself has been silent on the subject, so it is hard to determine if that is the case.
Gou might be a harder nut to crack, in spite of having promised to back Hou both before and after Hou was nominated. He is still acting like a candidate and clearly has an agenda, and rumors he is hoping that the KMT will dump Hou for himself or that he will even run as an independent candidate are flying about.
Note that I have referred to Han and Gou “fans” but only referred to Hou's supporters. That is not accidental. In the local papers, there are regular references to Han and Gou “fans” (粉絲), which indicates a degree of passion or ardent support.
Since Hou’s campaign started, I have not seen one reference to Hou having fans, only supporters. There are also references to Ko and Lai fans.
Hou must have some fans. I am not sure if they are too small in number to make enough impact on the media, are too quiet, or the media has simply convinced themselves they do not exist.
If you now have the impression that the Hou campaign is in trouble, it gets worse. Stay tuned for part two.
