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.
Frozen Garlic 
January 16, 2012 at 11:48 am |
FG.
what is your definition of seats marginality?
20% – safe seat ??
January 16, 2012 at 12:08 pm |
I don’t have a clear definition. Maybe it is something like, there is no way in hell they can lose this seat. Or to be more colorful, we could remember former Louisiana governor (and convicted felon) Edwin Edwards, who once said that the only way he could lose was if they caught him in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.
January 16, 2012 at 2:23 pm |
Taipei 2 and New Taipei 3 seem like toss up seats although the districts are very green? KMT nearly got wiped out in South. whoever controlled the city/counties will get a overwhelming advantage in winning the seats, the administrative power can overcame the traditional blue/green support base? like marginal seats ( 7 to 12% ) become toss up?
any ultra safe seats? – 30% marginality. KMT or DPP can nominate a dog to stand in the district and still win.
January 16, 2012 at 9:12 pm |
Taipei 2 is not very green even when it comes to presidential election. So I expect a toss-up over there.
I’m really surprised with how weak the DPP candidate is in Taichung 8. He won 39.5% of the votes when the DPP base here is easily over 45%. i guess he will be forever ignored when it comes to LY candidate nomination from now on.
January 16, 2012 at 10:33 pm |
the Blues got free 8 seats from the start.
any numbers for the overall constituencies votes percentages?
January 17, 2012 at 4:04 am |
I’m still waiting for the CEC download files. The Liberty Times reported the KMT at 48.2 and DPP at 43.8%. To get the blue and green camp totals, you would have to add in some other candidates. Green is easier since there are fewer. I count about 182,000 obvious other green votes, which is about 1.4%, so the green camp is about 45.2%. That’s almost identical to the presidential vote.