TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — Kuomintang (KMT) Chair Eric Chu (朱立倫) has repeatedly stated that if the opposition forces don’t unite the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Lai Ching-te (賴清德) will win the presidential election “lying down.” Looking at the numbers, Chu is probably right, but there are ways that Lai still could lose.
Most, though not all, polling suggests that a majority of the population wants a change in the ruling party. Since 2000, the pattern has been to give one party two terms, then switch parties.
The Taiwan People’s Party’s (TPP) Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has made it clear he is running until the end. The KMT’s Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) used more martial language about battling to death or words to that effect.
Lai is widely seen as having a “ceiling” of 40% support in local media. I think that come polling day, that will be his floor once all the undecideds make up their minds.
However, I think every point of support above 40%, is going to get harder and harder to achieve. If I had to guess this far out from election day, Lai gets to 43% fairly easily. Topping 45% will be difficult, but not impossible.
The new ETtoday poll has Lai at 35.4%, Hou in second at 25.6% and Ko in third at 24.2%. This poll shows the same trends as recent My-Formosa polling, with Lai stable the last few months at just slightly above 35%, Hou slowly climbing from his July lows and Ko losing steam and slipping downwards.
The latest My-Formosa poll has Lai at 35.7%, Hou at 21.9% and Ko at 21.7%. That pollster has a new tracking poll that appears to show Lai breaking out on the upside in the last few days after remaining between 35.1% and 35.9% since at least early May, but I want to look into the details of how they’re doing the polling before using that data.
The ETtoday poll has fewer undecideds because their poll asks a more definitive “who would you vote for if the election were tomorrow” rather than My-Formosa’s more vague reference to the election being in four months and asking “who might you vote for” at that future date.
It’s true that one poll does have Lai already at 43%, but as explained in my previous column I view that as an outlier.
Can Lai be beaten?
Of course, Lai could still be beaten. A lot can happen between now and election day on Jan. 13. Two things would have to happen. Lai’s support would have to take a big hit and opposition supporters would have to shift their votes strategically to the opposition frontrunner.
Lai and his campaign have been playing it very safe and have shown tight discipline. Having been in politics so many years, he has been well vetted by the press and his political opponents looking for any dirt they can get on him, but have come up with nothing significant. It’s unlikely they’ll find anything this time, and being disciplined Lai isn’t likely to give them anything new. He’s also not prone to gaffes.
A bigger concern would be a scandal in the party, of which he is also the chair. It would need to involve more than one bad apple and appear to be a systemic problem in the party for it to significantly dent Lai’s support.
Probably the biggest worry for the Lai campaign would be some sort of scandal involving the government, which is huge, unwieldy and has a lot of moving parts that could go wrong. Lai is not only the vice president in that government, but he is also running on a campaign of being essentially President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) 2.0. Anything disastrous to hit the administration would in turn hit him.
President Tsai’s approval ratings have remained in the upper forties or low fifties this year, which is strikingly high after seven years in office. However, that could change dramatically if, for example, her administration badly mismanaged a natural disaster like her predecessor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) did with Typhoon Morakot or if a major corruption scandal broke at the top levels of government as happened to his predecessor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Hard math
If nothing sticks to Lai, then things get very hard for the opposition. Using a very conservative estimate of Lai getting 40% at the ballot box, that leaves only 60% for the other two candidates.
In Taiwan it isn’t unusual for voters to cast their ballots strategically to forestall a candidate they really do not want to win in what’s called locally the “dump/save effect” (棄保效應). For example, in the last Hsinchu mayoral election, when the TPP candidate pulled ahead of her KMT rival, a big chunk of KMT supporters broke for the TPP to help their candidate beat the DPP.
The problem for both the TPP and KMT this time is neither candidate has a clear lead. Even if one breaks out ahead, they would need to drive their rival’s support to under 10% in order to beat Lai.
That’s extremely hard. In the Hsinchu case cited above, the KMT candidate still retained 18% of the vote from die-hard party members.
Ko’s problem is those die-hard, loyal KMT supporters. It is hard to know exactly what percentage of the population that is, but it is most likely above 10%.
Hou’s problem is that if Ko’s supporters see that Ko is a hopeless cause, only some will swing to Hou. Ko is strong with younger voters who would be more likely to switch to Lai and voters who are sick of the politics as usual in the two bigger parties and who might just stay home and skip the election altogether.
If Foxconn founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) enters the race, the situation gets even harder for the opposition, even if he only wins a few percentage points.
Barring any unforeseen calamity to hit the Lai campaign, it looks like Eric Chu’s prediction will come true and Lai will win this one "Lai-ing down".