Freezing Garlic

I haven’t had time to write anything for the blog recently.  Apparently my real job wants all my time.  In lieu of an actual post, I offer this vignette:

My wife recently informed me that she tried freezing garlic.  She hadn’t considered the possibility until she was inspired by a story about President Ma’s New Year’s shopping excursion at the traditional market with his mother.  The vendors all tried to give him free things, and he welcomed all gifts except for garlic.  He got so much garlic during the campaign that his freezer is full of the stuff.

I’ve been writing a blog entitled “frozen garlic” for two years, and my wife needs President Ma to click the switch in her brain.  Go figure.

Happy New Year.

DPP all-stars

Which DPP candidates did well, and which were terrible?  We could judge this by who won and who lost, but that overlooks the very important factor that it is a lot easier to win in a place like Tainan than it is in a place like Hsinchu County.  So instead of looking at winning and losing, I’m going to compare each candidate’s performance to a party baseline.  I’m using the presidential vote as a baseline, mostly for convenience.  The CEC still hasn’t released the downloadable precinct level election data [I think they are waiting to finish all the recounts], so this is the fastest way to put together a small data set.

This is still very quick and dirty.  Many districts cross township borders, and I don’t have time to figure out the exact presidential votes in these districts.  Instead, I am just putting the entire township total into one district or another.  For example, Shilin 士林 District is split between Taipei 1 and Taipei 2.  Most of it is in Taipei 2, but the Tienmu 天母 area is in Taipei 1.  I put the entire Shilin District into District 2.  Since the Tienmu area leans heavily to the DPP, this has the effect of making District 1 look greener than it really is and making District 2 look bluer than it really is.  So this is not perfect, but this is the best I can do right now.

 

Let’s look at the All-Stars.  Here are the candidates who beat Tsai Ing-wen by at least 4%.  Districts with asterisks are ones that might not be so accurate.

 

District	Name	Tsai	LY%	+	Win?
Taitung*	Liu Chao-hao	0.305	0.416	0.111	Y
Pingtung 3	Pan Men-an	0.569	0.666	0.097	Y
Taichung 1	Tsai Chi-chang	0.467	0.545	0.079	Y
Penghu	Yang Yao	0.457	0.534	0.078	Y
New Taipei 2*	Lin Shu-fen	0.511	0.587	0.077	Y
Taichung 6	Lin Chia-lung	0.452	0.518	0.065	Y
Kaohsiung 4	Lin Tai-hua	0.586	0.648	0.062	Y
Hsinchu Cnty	Perng Shaw-jiin	0.309	0.370	0.061
Taichung 4	Chang Liao Wan-chien	0.407	0.463	0.056
Yunlin 2	Liu Chien-kuo	0.555	0.610	0.055	Y
Tainan 3	Chen Ting-fei	0.562	0.617	0.055	Y
Tainan 2	Huang Wei-cher	0.629	0.681	0.052	Y
Taoyuan 2	Kuo Jung-chung	0.446	0.498	0.052
Taoyuan 3*	Huang Jen-shu	0.351	0.399	0.048
Taichung 7	Ho Hsin-chun	0.460	0.503	0.043	Y
Changhua 4	Wei Ming-ku	0.463	0.502	0.040	Y

 

Liu Chao-hao 劉櫂豪 tops the list, but a third of Taitung’s population is Aborigines who vote in the presidential election but not in the district legislative election.  Aborigines vote overwhelmingly for the KMT, so Liu benefitted tremendously by not having them in his district.  Liu probably ran ahead of Tsai, but not by much.  I don’t think he belongs on this list.  He owes his victory to a split KMT vote, not to a spectacular personal vote.

Pan Men-an 潘孟安 in Pingtung 3 is in second place.  His district also has quite a few aborigines, but they are a significantly smaller percentage of the population than in Taitung.  Pan’s bonus is inflated, but he clearly belongs on this list.  The KMT ran a very weak candidate, and Pan crushed him.  Several other candidates had similar situations – a clear DPP majority in the district, a very weak KMT candidate, and a crushing victory.  These candidates include Lin Tai-hua 林岱樺, Huang Wei-cher 黃偉哲, and Chen Ting-fei 陳亭妃.

One person who you might think belongs in the above category but actually does not is Lin Shu-fen 林淑芬 (New Taipei 2).  Her district is only marginally pro-green.  In fact, it is almost exactly identical to neighboring New Taipei 3, which the DPP won by a razor-thin margin.  Lin Shu-fen turned her slight advantage into an overwhelming victory.  Note that the four candidates in the previous category and Lin Shu-fen are all incumbents.

There were five DPP candidates who won in majority blue districts.  In these districts, Tsai had less that 50%, but the legislative candidate significantly outpolled her and was able to transform defeat into victory.  These are the DPP superstars this year.  Three of the five are in Taichung, where the Tsai Ing-wen did not have a majority any district.  However, Tsai Chi-chang 蔡其昌, Lin Chia-lung 林佳龍, and Ho Hsin-chun 何欣純 ran 7.9%, 6.5%, and 4.3% ahead of her.  You can really see the importance of good candidates in these close Taichung races by the fact that Tsai Ing-wen actually got a higher vote share in Taichung 3 and Taichung 8 than in any of these three districts.  However, the DPP candidates in those two districts were extremely weak.  (Taichung 3 is Michael Turton’s home district.  This should make him puke.)  The other two DPP superstars were Yang Yao 楊曜 in Penghu and Wei Ming-ku 魏明谷 in Changhua 4.  Note that none of these five were incumbents.

Finally, there are three candidates who did very well in a losing effort.  Perng Shaw-jiin 彭紹瑾 and Chang Liao Wan-chien 張廖萬堅 both ran well ahead of Tsai, but they started from such a deep hole that even this nice performance didn’t come close to victory.  Kuo Jung-chung 郭榮宗 in Taoyuan 2 very nearly joined the superstar category.  However, he started from a deeper hole than any of those five, as Tsai only got 44.6% of the vote in his district, and it was a two candidate race with no minor candidates to siphon votes away from the KMT candidate.  Kuo ran 5.2% ahead of Tsai; he needed to run 5.5% ahead.  Regardless, Kuo, Perng, and Chang Liao can all hold their heads high in defeat.

Huang Jen-shu 黃仁杼 probably doesn’t belong on this list.  Part of Zhongli City is in Taoyuan 6, and that part, which has a heavy military population, is overwhelmingly blue.  Tsai’s vote includes all of Zhongli City, so it looks low. Tsai’s vote in Taoyuan 3 is higher, and Huang probably did not run far ahead of her, if at all.

 

I’ll look at the poor performers next time.

technocrats and electoral reform

In the aftermath of the elections, everyone is scrambling to determine which seats are empty and who should fill them.  I don’t have much to say now about those choices except that most media reports suggest the new Premier and Vice Premier will be Chen Chong 陳沖 and Chiang Yi-hua 江宜華 (currently Vice Premier and Interior Minister), a couple of technocrats.  I want politicians!  Look, I understand that the Ma is worried about the international financial markets, but didn’t he learn his lesson before with Liu Chao-hsuan 劉兆玄?  The Premier needs to be good at political communication, not just good at understanding public policy.  [Frozen Garlic is probably the only voice arguing for more 政客!]

 

Speaker Wang Jin-pyng 王金平 made my day today by suggesting that electoral reform might be a good idea.  I love this guy!  He is worried by the disproportionality of the current system, the fact that it crushes small parties, and, most of all, that the blue areas are becoming bluer and the green areas are becoming greener.  He probably feels this personally, since the KMT incumbent in his hometown got swept away in the local DPP tide.

As I wrote a couple of months ago, I absolutely hate the current system.  Almost anything would be better, including going back to the old system.  The DPP’s preferred option is a MMP (mixed member proportional; for details, see the linked essay) system.  However, after watching the DPP’s debacle in determining its party list this year, I don’t think an MMP system would be the best choice for Taiwan?  What would be the best choice?  I believe an Open List Proportional Representation system would fit the bill almost perfectly.

I’m not going to get too excited, though.  While the Liberty Times report was very positive, the United Daily News report was much more reserved.  Lots of people in the KMT like the current system since they believe it works for their party and for them personally.  As they [reasonably] point out, the DPP was the party that insisted on the change in 2005.  Now that the DPP has lost a couple of elections under the system, it has decided that maybe this system isn’t so great.  In other words, you got what you wished for, so now you have to live with it.  [I will never forgive Lin Yi-hsiung 林義雄 for this disastrous electoral system.]

 

One thing the DPP has discussed is asking the Council of Grand Justices to rule whether the current electoral system violates the constitutional principle of each vote being equal.  I don’t like this idea at all.  The electoral system is written in the constitution.  It can’t be unconstitutional if it is in the constitution.  I certainly don’t want unelected judges to decide which part of the constitution is more constitutional than some other part of the constitution.  If you want to change the constitution, don’t take the lazy route and rely on judges.  That would set a very dangerous precedent.  The solution has to come through the political process of amending the constitution.

Grading my LY prediction

Seven week before the election, I classified all 73 seats into one of five categories.  Let’s see how I did.  Here is what I wrote:

Here’s my up to date handicapping of all the races.  It still looks like the blue camp will retain a majority, but that is not a sure bet by any means.  The hardest line to draw in this particular exercise was the one between “leans blue” and “tossup”.  On another day, the two might have had 15 and 16 districts, respectively.  I also think that the green camp is likely to win well more than half of the current tossup group.

Keep in mind that the blue camp will win all six aboriginal seats.

I’m still basing this all on a small KMT overall victory, say about 52-48.  If the DPP wins the presidency by 52-48, they will probably win all the tossups plus a couple others, such as New Taipei 6, Taichung 3, Miaoli 1, and Penghu.  The basic point is that I can imagine scenarios in which the DPP wins a majority without stretching my imagination too much.

The KMT won the presidency by 6 points, and, more importantly, the blue camp beat the green camp by about 9 points, so my predictions should be overly optimistic for the DPP.  Here is the table.  KMT wins are blue, and DPP wins are red (green is hard to see).

Safe blue (14)	Leans blue (20)	Tossup (11)	Leans Green (17)	Safe Green (11)
Taipei 1	Taipei 3	Taipei 4	Taipei 2	New Taipei 2
Taipei 6	Taipei 5	New Taipei 4	New Taipei 3	Tainan 1
Taipei 7	New Taipei 1	New Taipei 7	New Taipei 5	Tainan 2
Taipei 8	New Taipei 6	New Taipei 10	Taichung 1	Tainan 3
New Taipei 8	New Taipei 12	Taichung 6	Taichung 7	Tainan 4
New Taipei 9	Taichung 2	Kaohsiung 1	Taichung 8	Tainan 5
New Taipei 11	Taichung 3	Kaohsiung 2	Kaohsiung 5	Kaohsiung 4
Taichung 5	Taichung 4	Kaohsiung 8	Kaohsiung 6	Yunlin 2
Taoyuan 6	Kaohsiung 3	Taoyuan 1	Kaohsiung 7	Chiayi 2
Miaoli 2	Taoyuan 3	Taoyuan 4	Kaohsiung 9	Pingtung 1
Jilong	Taoyuan 5	Taitung	Ilan	Pingtung 3
Hsinchu City	Hsinchu Cnty		Taoyuan 2
Jinmen	Miaoli 1		Changhua 1
Lienchiang	Changhua 2		Yunlin 1
	Changhua 3		Chiayi 1
	Changhua 4		Pingtung 2
	Nantou 1		Chiayi City
	Nantou 2
	Hualien
	Penghu

How did I do?

Safe blue: 14 of 14 correct (100%)

Leans blue: 18 of 20 (90%)

tossup: KMT 6, DPP 5

leans green: 9 of 17 correct (53%)

safe green: 11 of 11 (100%)

overall safe or leaning: 52 of 62 (84%)

I think I misclassified a few of the seats that I got right.  Taipei 4, Taoyuan 1, and Taoyuan 4 should have been blue leaning seats, not tossup seats.  In those districts, Tsai’s vote was not close to Ma’s.   Tainan 3 and Tainan 4 probably should have been listed as leaning green, not safe green.

What about the ten races I got wrong?  Well, in the leans green category, five of the eight losses were by razor thin margins (Taoyuan 2, Changhua 1, Yunlin 1, Chiayi 1, Pingtung 2).  If Tsai had lost by four points instead of six (or nine), the DPP would have won those five seats.  I’ll blame the nearly perfect split of green votes in Kaohsiung 9 on CSB’s mother-in-law’s untimely death.  The DPP should have won Taichung 8; its candidate was shockingly weak.

I have no excuse for New Taipei 5.  This one is in the wrong category.  In recent elections, Shulin has been a fairly good area for the DPP, but this time Tsai lost to Ma in Shulin by a clear margin.

The two misses in the leans blue category were highly surprising to me.  Ma won a majority in both districts, and the KMT had seemingly entrenched incumbents in both.  At least I can claim I had my eye on Penghu; Changhua 4 was completely unexpected to me.  Heck, the DPP candidate was a familiar old face, and I thought we could be sure that we knew what he was (not) capable of.   Every election has at least one completely inexplicable result, and this was it for me.

Overall, this wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t bad considering I had no polling data to work with.

a new political cleavage?

I think when we look back at the 2012 election a decade from now, we might remember this as the year the economic cleavage was introduced to Taiwan’s politics.

This is the first year that big businesses have lined up so unanimously on one side.  Moreover, there was a real difference in Tsai’s vision of a welfare state with wealth distributed more evenly and Ma’s focus on the traditional numbers like GDP growth.

However, if this is the first time the election has been so explicitly framed in terms of a left-right divide, we must remind ourselves that this was not a cross-cutting cleavage.  Instead, the new left-right divide was simply layered on top of the China cleavage.  The big businesses lined up on the KMT’s side precisely because they want access to the China market.  Tsai framed her concern about the growing wealth gap in terms of how integration into the China market affects normal people’s incomes.

Maybe in the future, the left-right cleavage will take on a life of its own and cut across the traditional unification-independence axis.  If it does, that might upset the KMT’s seeming perpetual majority.  For now, I am simply observing the emergence of a left-right cleavage as an important way to decide which side you are on.

 

DPP’s drop since 2010

Many of us were surprised at the size of the KMT’s victory yesterday.  This is most likely due to the fact that the DPP did so well in the 2009-2010 local elections, and we assumed that it would at least hold that level of support in this presidential election.  It did not.  There was a significant retreat in the DPP’s support levels in many big cities and counties.

For reference, here is a table with the DPP’s performance in the 2008 presidential election, the 2009/2010 mayoral races, and the 2012 presidential election.  Note how well the DPP in the mayoral races in several populous areas, including Taipei City, New Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung, and Tainan as well as a few more rural areas such as Yunlin, Pingtung, Taitung, Penghu, and Ilan.  The only places where Tsai clearly beat the mayoral performance were Kaohsiung, Changhua, and Nantou.

	2008	2009/2010	2012
Taipei City	0.370	0.438	0.395
New Taipei	0.389	0.474	0.435
Ilan	0.486	0.543	0.525
Taoyuan	0.354	0.457	0.399
Hsinchu County	0.260	0.306	0.309
Miaoli	0.290	0.336	0.332
Taichung	0.400	0.489	0.447
Changhua	0.424	0.436	0.465
Nantou	0.380	0.398	0.424
Yunlin	0.515	0.654	0.558
Chiayi County	0.544	0.559	0.586
Tainan	0.533	0.604	0.577
Kaohsiung	0.497	0.528	0.534
Pingtung	0.503	0.593	0.551
Taitung	0.267	0.474	0.305
Hualien	0.225		0.259
Penghu	0.421	0.481	0.457
Jilong	0.323	0.421	0.367
Hsinchu City	0.353	0.413	0.395
Chiayi City	0.476	0.457	0.510
Jinmen	0.049		0.082
Lianjiang	0.048		0.080

 

So what accounts for the drop in the DPP’s fortunes since 2010?  I have several plausible answers.

1. This is a question of candidate quality.  The DPP mayoral candidates were much better than their KMT opponents, but Tsai was not clearly much better than Ma.  You can explain a few of these results in terms of candidate quality.  The KMT’s candidate in Yunlin was extremely weak, and the DPP faced two very strong opponents in Kaohsiung.  However, I don’t think you can make the argument that the DPP’s parachute candidate in Taichung was stronger than the two-term KMT incumbent.  Likewise, it is a bit of a stretch to argue that the DPP enjoyed an advantage in candidate quality in Taoyuan.  Overall, I don’t think this argument works.
2. This is the difference between local and national elections.  In local elections, voters are willing to vote for the DPP.  In national elections, they are afraid of the DPP’s cross-straits policies (or some similar explanation).
3. The 2009/2010 elections were effectively midterm elections.  The opposition party always does well in midterm elections.
4. The DPP suffered a real decline in popularity (or the KMT gained in popularity) over the past year.

 

Explanations 2-4 are all plausible, and I don’t have any evidence for one or the other.

I think it is plausible that the KMT did increase in popularity over the past 12-24 months.  In particular, Ma’s first year and a half was a mess.  He fooled around with delegating power to KMT elders like Lien Chan and Wu Po-hsiung while he entrusted the government to technocrat Liu Chao-hsuan.  Ma arguably found his footing when he realized that the presidency is not a ceremonial post in Taiwan, assumed the KMT’s chair, and appointed a savvy politician (Wu Den-yi) as Premier.  In addition, the benefits from ECFA might be starting to kick in.

 

Sorry if you wanted a clear answer.  I’m just thinking out loud.

 

Immediate reactions

Sometimes it is easy to forget how stable Taiwan’s party politics are.  This election result reflects that underlying stability.  It is hard to move the national vote more than a few percentage points.

I previously wrote that even if Ma Ying-jeou won, it would be an ugly win.  I was wrong.  His 6% win seems like a substantial win, especially when you consider that the blue-green balance is 54-46.  This is a little smaller than the 58-42 balance of four years ago, but 54-46 is still a substantial gap, especially since the KMT did not have the advantage of running against an unpopular and discredited incumbent.  With a sizeable 70-43 majority in the legislature, Ma Ying-jeou is not going to immediately become a lame duck president.  Instead, he probably has enough power to do most of what he wants.  He will almost certainly have the power to implement the next stage of ECFA, and it is not out of the question that he could push through the peace agreement that he mentioned during the campaign.

 

Because the blue camp vote was split between Ma and Soong, I am going to look primarily at the green camp vote.  Four years ago, Frank Hsieh got 41.6% of the vote.  This year, Tsai Ing-wen got 45.6%.  The interesting thing is that the DPP’s vote grew just about 4% everywhere, regardless of how much they had four years ago.  The only major exception is Taipei City, which has always been the most stable place in Taiwan.  The increase is slightly higher in Tsai’s childhood home of Pingtung and in the northern Hakka areas (Taoyuan, Hsinchu County, and Miaoli), but the difference is not too great.  The DPP even increased by nearly 4% in Jinmen and Lianjiang which is particularly startling since this meant that they nearly doubled their previous levels of support.  I’m not sure what this nearly uniform increase means, but it certainly is interesting.

 

	2008	2012	improvement
Taipei City	0.370	0.395	0.026
New Taipei	0.389	0.435	0.045
Ilan	0.486	0.525	0.039
Taoyuan	0.354	0.399	0.045
Hsinchu Cnty	0.260	0.309	0.050
Miaoli	0.290	0.332	0.042
Taichung	0.400	0.447	0.047
Changhua	0.424	0.465	0.041
Nantou	0.380	0.424	0.044
Yunlin	0.515	0.558	0.043
Chiayi Cnty	0.544	0.586	0.041
Tainan	0.533	0.577	0.044
Kaohsiung	0.497	0.534	0.037
Pingtung	0.503	0.551	0.049
Taitung	0.267	0.305	0.038
Hualien	0.225	0.259	0.034
Penghu	0.421	0.457	0.036
Jilong	0.323	0.367	0.044
Hsinchu City	0.353	0.395	0.042
Chiayi City	0.476	0.510	0.034
Jinmen	0.049	0.082	0.033
Lianjiang	0.048	0.080	0.032

 

 

I had thought that Tsai Ing-wen would run a bit ahead of her party, but this turned out not to be the case.  If you take the party list votes and break them into their traditional blue and green components (KMT, PFP, and NP are blue; DPP and TSU are green), the balance is 51.5-43.6, or a 7.9% lead for the blue camp.  That is only slightly smaller than the gap in the presidential election.  The other parties collectively took about 4.9% of the party list vote.  If you really want to apportion their votes to the blue or green camps, I would put the People Party (人民最大黨) and the Green Party in the green camp.  The former advocated a pardon for former President Chen, and the latter had a strategic alliance with the DPP in one Taipei district.  I’d put all the others in the blue camp.  That produces a blue-green balance of 54.0-46.0%.  At first glance, it doesn’t look like Tsai Ing-wen was able to take any votes from the other side of the political divide.  This presidential election ran along familiar partisan lines.

 

 

Turning to the 73 single-member districts, the KMT won these by a 46-27 margin.  (I am counting the two independents as KMT candidates.)  I don’t know the breakdown of party votes for these constituencies yet, but I imagine it is fairly close to the presidential and party list results.  This has turned a small blue camp advantage in votes into a sizeable advantage in seats.

Four years ago, it was assumed that the new electoral system had given the KMT an almost automatic majority in the legislature, and this election seems to confirm that idea.  Even though the election was fairly close, the KMT has easily won a majority.  However, I would argue that the DPP came as close to winning a majority in the legislature as it did to winning the presidential election.

Let’s do a small thought experiment.  Suppose that the DPP had one 1% more of the national vote.  Assume that the actual results already contain all the malapportionment and personal votes, so we simply add 1% to the DPP candidates’ votes and subtract 1% from the KMT candidates’.  If you do this, the DPP wins 5 additional seats, and the overall result is a 41-32 balance.  If we assume that the DPP won 2% more (which was roughly my pre-election guess), add 2 more seats for a 39-34 balance.  If the swing is 3% (putting Tsai and Ma in a dead tie), 4 more seats switch and the green camp wins the SMD seats by 35-38.  In this scenario, the KMT’s advantage in aboriginal seats would still give the blue camp a slight overall edge in the legislature, but let’s remember that in this scenario, the green camp’s overall vote is still slightly below 50% (at 48.6%), so it isn’t unreasonable that their legislative seats are also slightly below 50%.  If you assume the swing is 4% (putting the green camp at nearly 50% of the national vote, the SMD seats go 32-41 for the green camp.  This would be a large enough margin to give them a majority even after the KMT wins all the aboriginal seats.  In sum, the DPP had to win just about the same number of votes to win the legislature as it did the presidency.  It fell short on both counts.

 

Third party candidates did not hurt the KMT in this election.  There were nine races that the DPP could have stolen because the KMT’s vote was split by a third party candidate.  The KMT only had one opportunity.  However, the DPP only succeeded in one of its nine opportunities (Taitung), while the KMT succeeded in its only opportunity (Kaohsiung 9).

In five of the eight missed opportunities for the DPP, I am surprised by the DPP’s failure to win.  In these cases, if you had told me how much the third party candidate won, I would have confidently predicted a DPP victory.  Instead, very weak performances by these five DPP candidates allowed the KMT to hold these five seats.

 

district	KMT	DPP	3rd	notes
Taipei 4	48	34	17	missed chance
New Taipei 7	44	43	13	Missed chance
New Taipei 8	48	40	11	Improbable
New Taipei 9	49	28	23	Improbable
New Taipei 12	42	36	21	Missed chance
Taoyuan 5	45	35	19	Improbable
Taichung 8	45	39	16	Missed chance
Changhua 1	35.2	35.0	28	Missed chance
Kaohsiung 9	38	32	27	Steal
Taitung	30	42	28	Steal

 

I had thought that with the focus so heavily on the presidential elections, the outcomes in the legislative races would be pulled closer to those in the presidential election.  This doesn’t seem to have happened.  At first glance, personal votes are still quite important.  In fact, with the closer national balance, it looks like personal votes were decisive in a number of elections.

 

Turnout was lower than expected at 74.3%.  Most people had expected something in the range of 78-80%.  At first glance, it looks like the KMT mobilized their best areas better than the DPP.  Turnout is a bit higher in Taipei and New Taipei Cities and a bit lower in Yunlin and Chiayi Counties.  This might simply be an urban/rural divide, but I’d bet that turnout worked slightly in the KMT’s favor overall.  I don’t think that this was sufficient to swing the overall outcome, but that is unknowable.

 

Finally, as the results of the presidential race slowly solidified, it occurred to me that I have seen this result before with a very similar cast of characters.

	1998 Taipei Mayor	%	2012 President	%
KMT	Ma Ying-jeou	51.1	Ma Ying-jeou	51.6
DPP	Chen Shui-bian	45.9	Tsai Ing-wen	45.6
New/PFP	Wang Chian-hsuan	3.0	James Soong	2.8

How is that for similarity in what will probably be the first and last elections of Ma Ying-jeou’s career!

A message to the losing side

[Note: I wrote this before the votes were counted. I don’t know who lost yet.]

 

One of my favorite definitions of democracy is that democracy is a system in which political parties lose elections.

Congratulations.  Today the responsibility and honor of shouldering the burden of losing and of making Taiwan a democracy falls to you.

It is easy to be a democrat when you win.  Everyone likes to win.  But democracy is not a system that allows you to win every time.  It only gives you an opportunity to try to win each time.  Sometimes you will lose.  When that happens, you have to accept the loss.

You didn’t expect to lose this year.  You knew there was a possibility, but, deep down, you thought this year your side would win.  So the result was surprising and harder to accept.  However, democracy demands that you accept this result.

Sure, the other side used all kinds of dirty tricks.  They cynically lied when they made campaign promises they knew they wouldn’t be able to keep.  They shamelessly used every method to mobilize every last possible vote.  They brazenly threatened the voters that if they lost, Taiwan’s future would be jeopardized.

None of that matters.  The only people who voted in this election were the 18 million eligible Taiwanese citizens.  Each one of them had as much right to vote as you, and each one got to make his or her own choice.  Some of them made choices based on misinformation, values that you detest, or blatant self-interest, but that is their right.  In the end, everyone freely made a decision, and the other side got more support.

Of course, this outcome is a disaster for Taiwan.  The other side is going to make a lot of terrible policy choices.  Your side will do its best to stop the worst ones and water down some of the others, but, because of today’s election result, your side will lose most of these fights.  Their policies are going to make real changes and they will have real impacts.  Unfortunately, the poor and weak people in society will probably be hurt the most.  Their term in power is going to be a disaster for Taiwan.

And that is the way it should be.  In a democracy, elections have consequences.  The citizens get to vote on who will make the decisions, and then society has to live with the results of those choices.  This is far better than the alternative, in which there is no way for dissatisfied citizens to affect the government’s choices.

One of the great things about democracy is that it is ok to lose.  The losers don’t all get beheaded; instead they take up their positions as opposition leaders.  The new government can make some decisions, but it isn’t going to be powerful enough to unilaterally and irrevocably determine Taiwan’s future status.  The stakes are low enough that it is ok to wait until 2016 and try again then.

For today, you’ll probably feel miserable.  Just remember that today, your commitment to democracy is being tested, and this is a test you must pass.  I’m not sure those jerks on the other side could shoulder this burden, so, in a way, it’s Taiwan’s good fortune that the responsibility of losing has fallen to you this year.  Next time, maybe they’ll have to prove that they are as strongly committed to democracy as you are.

Frozen Garlic’s Best Flags of the Year

Here at the end of the campaign, it is time for Frozen Garlic’s Second Annual Best Campaign Flags Award Post.  This year has been a fairly miserable year for campaign flags.  On the one hand, the campaigns cut down drastically on the number of flags they produced.  On the other hand, this year has seen some of the ugliest flags in memory.

The color of the year is undoubtedly pink.  Traditional party colors took a beating this year, and many candidates tried to soften their look with pink.  Personally, I like pink.  It’s one of my favorite colors, and I have several pink shirts.  However, I don’t like the specific pink and yellow combination that Tsai Ing-wen and many other DPP candidates used this year.  It seemed harsh and grating to my eyes.

A few who fought against the pink tide but didn’t want to go to the traditional blue or green went instead for yellow.  (The fact that yellow is now a public color, available to everyone, is an indication that the New Party is quite sincerely dead.”

Here is a smattering of pink and yellow.  Quick, without looking at the names, can you tell which party these people are from?

There were a few more traditional looking flags.  At first glance, these flags scream “KMT” or “DPP.”

Interestingly, it was the KMT that tended to go with the traditional blue look.  Far fewer DPP candidates went with a traditional party look.  This is something new.  Over the past two decades, numerous observers have pointed out that KMT candidates “ran away” from their party label, not wishing to put the party symbols on their flags.  DPP candidates, in contrast, have traditionally put the party logo in a prominent place.  Not this year.  This year, DPP candidates were more likely to produce pink or yellow flags instead of something instantly recognizable as a DPP party flag.

I have argued in the past that KMT supporters should be happy that their candidates didn’t sport the party colors too prominently.  That meant that their candidates were appealing to votes beyond the core party supporters.  DPP candidates, on the other hand, were generally just trying to consolidate the party’s existing support.  Now, it seems the roles have been somewhat reversed.

I did see a couple of new things this year.  In this flag, the handwritten characters say “My grandmother was born here.”  There were about half a dozen of these flags on that street.  I’ve never seen flags customized like that for a particular street or neighborhood.  I wonder if she put up similar flags in other neighborhoods.

This morning, I saw this guy standing out in the rain with a signboard.  Apparently, the politicians are taking a cue from the real estate developers with these sorts of signboards.

This is not new this year, but I think it might be unique to Huang Shan-shan.  There are posters in business windows all over this district, and they stay up all year round.  Business owners generally hate to advertise their political leanings, so these posters are a sign of real support.  You occasionally see similar posters for other politicians, but I think the density of these posters is unique to Huang.

This looks like a classic DPP ad.  Lee Chun-ting poses with Tsai Ing-wen and claims to be the next generation of the DPP.  There is just one problem.  He is not a DPP nominee.  This is from Taipei 7, the district in which the DPP didn’t nominate anyone and is instead supporting the Green Party candidate.  I guess Lee decided he would try to win the DPP voters that didn’t want to support the Green Party, which would be a fine strategy if there were 10 seats, not one.

If the Tsai campaign had been planning to promote the Grand Coalition idea all along, this should have been their national logo.  Note the color combination and the characters (sunlight, tolerance, gentle).  This would have been an excellent logo.  I only saw it once.

How about this one: The box on the bottom says that this banner for a DPP candidate was paid for by the Three Piggies.

The first award: Frozen Garlic’s Worst Ad of the Year goes to local candidate Li Chien-chang.  I thought this was an ad for a new movie.  You have to look really hard to even see his name.  I still have no idea what it means or why I should want to vote for him.  Awful.

Runner up: The KMT’s Taiwan Go campaign.  What the hell does this mean?  I think we are all in favor of Taiwan.  This is about as useless as the ubiquitous “Taiwan must win” line in many KMT ads.  What does it mean for Taiwan to win?  Is there some game that I don’t know about?  I know what it means for a candidate to win (which is probably what they really want), but not for a whole society.  Shallow.

Finally, it is time to award the prestigious Best Campaign Flag of the Election Cycle award.  Here are Frozen Garlic’s nominees:

In the year of pink, the bottom two are my two favorite pink flags.  I suppose I like pink and white much better than pink and yellow.  In the upper left, there are two pink flags from Chien Yu-yan, one with her picture and one with her as a Japanese cartoon character (note the same part in her hair and the same bow on her blouse).  The upper right flag is from Lo Fu-chu.  He wins a nomination because (a) his flag looks good, and (b) I’m terrified of him.  My favorite part of this flag is that it has streaks of black running through the red, just in case you forgot about his background.  Finally, Lee Chien-lung wins a nomination for one of the best traditional looking flags.  If you read the fine print, he even slams his opponent for being an interloper.

And the winner is: cartoon Chien Yu-yan!  Congratulations on having the best flag in the year of pink!  Now all she has to do is beat her opponent Lo Shu-lei, whose flags are (of course!) pink.

two thoughts

Judging from the campaign advertisements, I’m pretty sure that at least half of the legislature has been judged as “the number one legislator.”  Chiang Nai-hsin 蔣乃辛, who hasn’t even been in for a full term is apparently number one.

Just off the top of my head, here in the Taipei area, incumbents claiming to be number one include Ting Shou-chung 丁守中, Chou Shou-hsun 周守訓, Chiang Nai-hsin 蔣乃辛, Lai Shi-pao 賴士葆, Lin Shu-fen 林淑芬, Li Hung-chun 李鴻鈞, and Lin Hung-chih 林鴻池.  I’m not sure about some of the others; the only ones I can be pretty sure are NOT claiming to be the best are Tsai Cheng-yuan 蔡正元, Chang Ching-chung 張慶忠, and Lee Ching-hua 李慶華, who probably decided that no one would believe such a claim.  Heck, we even have a former legislator (Lin Cho-shui 林濁水) making that claim.  My favorite response comes from Taipei 2 challenger Yao Wen-chih 姚文智, who retorts that his opponent, instead of being the best student, might need to be held back.

 

Somewhere in the depths of the internet, I ran across this gem.  Now, the law says that we can’t publicize any survey results after Jan 4, so I’m just pointing you to Tsai Cheng-yuan’s 蔡正元 blog.  He released a survey on Jan 3, and I’m scratching my head about it.  He wants to tell Huang Shan-shan 黃珊珊 supporters that their candidate’s cause is hopeless, and they should strategically vote for him to avoid throwing the Taipei 4 seat to the DPP.  However, I think his poll accomplishes the exact opposite.  Tsai and Huang are close enough that if I were a Huang supporter and saw this, I would conclude that the two are close enough that we really can’t be sure that Tsai is the stronger of the two.  In other words, this poll would give me permission to go ahead and vote for Huang.

I don’t know what the Tsai campaign was thinking about.  No one really believes that his own poll numbers announced on his blog are objective or neutral.  Is this the best he could do?  If it were me, I would have cut her support in half before publishing the numbers.  This tells me that Huang is a lot stronger than I thought she was.  Either that, or the Tsai campaign is marked by a bit of incompetence.

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