DPP nomination strategy in Taichung County

The DPP’s Taichung County branch has announced its nomination strategy for the upcoming city council elections.  If the national party goes along with this plan, the DPP will be nominating a very high number of candidates in Taichung County.

In these lower-level elections, the DPP never does very well.  In both the party list section of the 2008 legislative elections and the 2008 presidential election, the DPP got roughly 40% all over Taichung County.    In the table, I listed the share of the vote the DPP plus TSU got in each district.  It isn’t close to 40%.  In grassroots elections, they don’t come close to that, especially in the more rural townships.  The denser social networks there tend to work in the KMT’s favor, and lots of independent candidates also get considerable numbers of votes.

I imagine the DPP will raise these vote shares slightly in 2010 since it has slowly closed the gap between what it gets in national elections and local elections over the past two decades.  However, if they raise all these vote shares by 5%, they should be thrilled.  Even if they could get a 10% increase across the board, it would be difficult to support the number of nominees they are planning to put forward.

On the other hand, I think every party will be overnominating this year.  There are simply too many incumbents and hopefuls chasing too many seats.  As a result, a party that rations its votes very well could do spectacularly well at turning votes into seats this year.  This year is a tightrope act, with certain death facing most of the participants.

district		Total seats	DPP plans to nominate	2005 CC DPP+ TSU%	incumbents
1.	中西區	3
2.	東南區	4
3.	北屯區	6
4.	北區	3
5.	西屯區	5
6.	南屯區	4
7.	后豐區	5	3	30.3	4
8.	潭雅神區	6	3	31.9	3
9.	東勢石岡新社和平區	2	1	17.6	1
10.	大甲大安外埔區	3	1	16.7	0
11.	清水沙鹿梧棲區	5	2	17.8	0
12.	烏日大肚龍井區	5	2	15.8	1
13.	大里霧峰區	6	2-3	26.2	2
14.	太平區	4	2	29.5	2
15.	平地原住民Plains Aborigines	1
16.	山地原住民Mountain Aborigines	1
	total	63	16-17

(Note: The first six districts are in the current Taichung City, so the Taichung County office has no opinion about nomination strategy there.)

Tags: SNTV