population growth since 1955

I recently had the misfortune to stumble across population data at the township level from 1955.  Since I have been stuck with a mild case of writer’s block for my real research, that discovery was more than enough of a distraction to take me happily away from trying to bang out yet another unsatisfying draft of that damn project.  Ah, procrastination!

We all know the broad outlines of population growth in Taiwan in the postwar period.  The population grew at a very high rate in the 1950s through 1970s.  It slowed down in the 1980s and 1990s and is barely growing at all these days.  This was accompanied by two broad internal migration patterns.  On the one hand, people moved from rural areas to urban areas.  On the other hand, the population shifted from the south to the north.  There is nothing new and surprising about these patterns, but, at least for me, it is jarring to see them in township level data.

Let me give an example.  In Dec 2013, Chiayi County had 529,229 people, and New Taipei City had 3,954,929, or nearly eight times as many people.  In 1955, Chiayi County had 618,098, while Taipei County only had 638,091.  It’s jarring to think that Chiayi was once just as populous as Taipei County.  Of course, we are cheating a little.  In 1955, Chiayi County included Chiayi City, while Taipei County covered Nangang 南港鎮, Neihu 內湖鄉, Mucha 木柵鄉, and Chingmei 景美鎮 Townships.  Lest you think that adding these areas of modern Taipei City puts Taipei County at an unfair advantage, keep in mind that Chiayi City had far more residents than those four townships put together (148,552 to 65,177).  Or think of this.  In 1955, Lioujiao Township 六腳鄉 had more people than Jhonghe Township 中和鄉 (39,672 to 37,875).  These days, Lioujiao has shrunk to only 24,947 residents.  In contrast, Jhonghe has exploded to 415,742.  Even that doesn’t tell the full story, since the present-day Yonghe District 永和區 (pop. 229,062) was part of 1955 Jhonghe.  So where the two areas were roughly equal in 1955, these days, Jhonghe/Yonghe is about 25 times bigger.

To give a broader picture, I reclassified the 1955 data according to today’s boundaries.  I also found similar data from 1981, which is roughly halfway between 1955 and 2013.  Since a table with over 350 townships would be large, I’ve aggregated them into (today’s) counties and cities.

	1955	1981	2013	81/55	13/81	13/55
Total	9098643	18193955	23373517	2.00	1.28	2.57
.
New Taipei City	572914	2354858	3954929	4.11	1.68	6.90
Taipei City	852670	2270983	2686516	2.66	1.18	3.15
Taichung City	772963	1651296	2701661	2.14	1.64	3.50
Tainan City	969881	1564360	1883208	1.61	1.20	1.94
Kaohsiung City	877264	2245517	2779877	2.56	1.24	3.17
Ilan County	299455	445472	458456	1.49	1.03	1.53
Taoyuan County	426522	1093621	2044023	2.56	1.87	4.79
Hsinchu County	252855	363408	530486	1.44	1.46	2.10
Miaoli County	386693	545608	565554	1.41	1.04	1.46
Changhua County	787137	1180612	1296013	1.50	1.10	1.65
Nantou County	349208	527538	517222	1.51	0.98	1.48
Yunlin County	593923	796968	707792	1.34	0.89	1.19
Chiayi County	469546	574451	529229	1.22	0.92	1.13
Pingtung County	552702	892107	852286	1.61	0.96	1.54
Taitung County	159631	281100	224821	1.76	0.80	1.41
Hualian County	210336	357530	333897	1.70	0.93	1.59
Penghu County	84502	105674	100400	1.25	0.95	1.19
Keelung City	187468	347828	374914	1.86	1.08	2.00
Hsinchu City	144421	284737	428483	1.97	1.50	2.97
Chiayi City	148552	251840	270872	1.70	1.08	1.82
Jinmen County		50248	120713		2.40
Lianjiang County		8199	12165		1.48

The overall population doubled in the first 26 years, so no cities or counties had negative growth (though some townships did).  However, Taipei County absorbed far more of the population growth than anywhere else, quadrupling in size.  In the recent 32 years overall population growth has been much slower, but the urbanization and northward migration patterns have continued.  This has meant negative population growth for most of the agricultural heartland.  The above table shows Nantou, Yunlin, and Chiayi to have negative growth.  It’s actually clearer than that.  Changhua and Tainan have positive growth, but it is all in the urban areas.  If you look at the old Tainan County, once you take out Yongkang City 永康市 (which is really an extension of the metro area), the rest of the county had negative growth.  Similarly, the southern two-thirds of Changhua County also lost population.  So basically all of south-central Taiwan lost population between 1981 and 2013.  Meanwhile, Taoyuan became the fastest growing area, followed by New Taipei and Taichung.  (I don’t know what to make of the Jinmen and Lianjiang numbers.  You can easily spin a story about the new tourism economies, but I’m not sure how much I trust the 1981 numbers.)

Since I do elections, let’s imagine how these numbers would translate into political power.  Imagine that today’s legislative electoral system of 73 district seats were imposed in 1955 and 1981.  (Yes, I realize that would change history slightly more than merely imposing 2013 administrative lines on 1955, but save the alternate history for another day.)  Here is how those 73 seats would break down. (Remember, everyone gets a minimum of one seat.)

	1955	1981	2013
New Taipei City	4	9	12
Taipei City	7	9	8
Taichung City	6	7	8
Tainan City	8	6	6
Kaohsiung City	7	9	9
Ilan County	2	2	1
Taoyuan County	3	4	6
Hsinchu County	2	1	2
Miaoli County	3	2	2
Changhua County	6	5	4
Nantou County	3	2	1
Yunlin County	5	3	2
Chiayi County	4	2	1
Pingtung County	4	4	3
Taitung County	1	1	1
Hualian County	2	1	1
Penghu County	1	1	1
Keelung City	1	1	1
Hsinchu City	1	1	1
Chiayi City	1	1	1
Jinmen County	1	1	1
Lianjiang County	1	1	1

In a nutshell, compare the heartland counties (Changhua, Nantou, Yunlin, Chiayi, and Tainan) to the emergent areas (New Taipei, Taoyuan).  In 1955, the former would have had 27 seats to the latter’s 7.  In 2013, the heartland areas were reduced to 15 while the emergent areas have 18.  Take a couple of minutes to digest that.  Keep in mind that in 2012 the DPP won 56% of the seats in the heartland areas but only 11% in the emergent areas.

A few sharp readers may have noted that the 2013 seats are a bit wrong.  Nantou, for example, actually has 2 seats.  This is true, but the current apportionment was done in 2006, and Nantou barely had enough population to secure its second seat.  Seven years later, Nantou’s population has declined.  That second seat is gone, and it isn’t coming back.  Fortunately for Nantou, because of the corrupt bargain that said that redistricting would only take place once every ten years, Nantou will keep its second seat until the 2020 election.  By Dec 2018, when the new seats are apportioned, Nantou, Chiayi County, and Pingtung will all have lost a seat.  Kaohsiung is also in danger of losing a seat.  As of today, the winners are Tainan and Hsinchu County.  However, since Taoyuan, New Taipei, and Taichung are growing so fast, one of them will win another seat and Hsinchu might lose its second seat to another of them.

[Esoteric note.  The above apportionment is done incorrectly by current rules.  Under current rules, aboriginal population should be subtracted so that aborigines are not double counted.  I did not do this because (a) I didn’t have aboriginal population data for 1955 and 1981 and I wanted to be consistent, and (b) this is a fairly new rule that I don’t think was in effect in 2006.  Under the current rules, Chiayi County would still have its second seat and Pingtung would have already lost a seat.  Regardless, by 2018 both Chiayi and Pingtung will be far below the threshold for the last seat.]

This gets at the northward migration, but I still don’t think I have adequately encapsulated the urbanization.  Let’s think about population density.  Of course, Taiwan is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.  Outside of city states such as Singapore, Taiwan trails only Bangladesh.  In 2013, Taiwan had 646 people per square kilometer.  In 1955 and 1981, it was 251 and 503.  Those numbers woefully underestimates how people actually live, since about three-fourths of the island is sparsely populated deep mountains.  Instead of looking at the aggregated national averages, consider township population densities.  If you sort the townships by population density, you can see what kind of environment the median person lived in.  So let’s look at the 25^th, 50^th, and 75^th percentiles for each year.

	1955	1981	2013
25th	名間鄉	布袋鎮	田中鎮
25th	Mingjian, Nantou	Budai, Chiayi	Tianjhong, Changhua
25th	374	678	1245
.
50th	埤頭鄉	永靖鄉	豐原區
50th	Bitou, Changhua	Yongjing, Changhua	Fengyuan, Taichung
50th	632	1797	4032
.
75th	中和鄉	新莊市	桃園市
75th	Jhonghe, New Taipei	Sinjhuang, New Taipei	Taoyuan, Taoyuan
75th	1464	9680	11935

In 1955, the median person lived in a fairly rural place (by Taiwan standards).  Bitou was a classic farming community.  Even at the 75^th percentile, Jhonghe (as we have seen above) was hardly an urban place in 1955.  By 1981 Taiwan looked quite a bit different.  The 1981 25^th percentile township, Budai, was roughly as dense as the 1955 50^th percentile township.  The median person was still a farming community in southern Changhua, but now in a far denser community.  The biggest change was in the 75^th percentile.  At close to 10,000 people per square kilometer, Sihjhuang was clearly urban.  In 2013, the top quarter had not become much more densely packed.  In fact, many of the central city areas actually lost population during this period.  Taoyuan City in 2013 is not that different from Sihjhuang City in 1981.  The big change is in the next quartile.  By 2013, the median person lived in Fengyuan District, Taichung City.  Fengyuan is a quite urbanized area and is qualitatively different from the 1981 median township.  In general, between 1981 and 2013, the urbanization really occurred in this second quartile of the population.  Instead of packing ever more densely into the old city centers, people moved into new urban townships.  This led to dense cities surrounded by less dense but still urban peripheral areas.

Or we can cut the data in a slightly different way.  The following puts the population into five categories according to the population density of the township.  I think of the first categories as basically rural, the second as a small town with lots of rural characteristics, the middle category as a small city, the fourth as urban but not quite saturated, and the fifth category as utterly urban by any standards in the world.

	1955	1981	2013
	9,098,643	18,193,955	23,373,517
.
under 500	3,697,056	2,703,037	2,585,323
500-1000	2,385,844	3,776,873	2,673,947
1000-3000	1,588,445	4,493,555	4,989,507
3000-10000	651,092	2,938,115	6,783,986
over 10000	776,206	4,282,375	6,340,754
.
under 500	0.406	0.149	0.111
500-1000	0.262	0.208	0.114
1000-3000	0.175	0.247	0.213
3000-10000	0.072	0.161	0.290
over 10000	0.085	0.235	0.271

Think about these numbers in the context of democratization.  Democratization movements tend to be based in the cities, and this was also Taiwan’s experience.  When Lei Chen 雷震 attempted to build an opposition party in the late 1950s, he and his allies were not fighting on very fertile soil.  (It didn’t help that Hu Shih 胡適, the greatest voice for liberal democracy that the world has ever seen, paragon of marital virtue, and our Academia Sinica local deity, got cold feet and sold them out.)  By the time the next generation of activists tried in the late 1970s, Taiwan was a much more urban society.  Not coincidentally, they found much more support and repression was much more difficult.  Of course this sort of analysis is grossly oversimplifying things, but the degree of urbanization probably mattered a bit.

The last way I want to look at population trends is to look at the growth of individual metro areas.  Sometimes the political divisions are ridiculous.  For example, the official data say that Taipei has 2.6 million residents.  Balderdash.  The administrative lines do not reflect the actual urban area.  Taipei metro area is much, much larger.  Sometimes this goes the other way.  Drive down the west coast from Budai Township 布袋鎮 in (rural) Chiayi County to Beimen District 北門區 in (Direct Municipality) Tainan City.  I dare you to claim that you have suddenly made a transition from extremely rural to extremely urban.  Unless you see a sign, you probably won’t know you have entered a city at all.  So I like to reclassify metro areas subjectively by which districts I think are really part of the core city.  The most important thing I look at is population density.  However, I also consider geography (Does it have lots of mountains?) and whether you have to travel through a non-urban area to get to another urban area.  And because there are different levels of urbanization within a city, I subdivide the metro area into core and peripheral urban areas.  In the current Taipei metro area for example, I consider Beitou 北投 to be a part of the core city, while Danshuei 淡水 is peripheral.  Again, this is subjective, and there is a bit of guessing involved for 1955 and 1981.

	1955	1981	2013
Total pop.	9098643	18135508	23240639
Metros	2022378	8313628	15574223
Metro %	0.222	0.458	0.670
.
Taipei	853013	3932376	6212153
Core	652002	3723211	5186256
Periphery	201011	209165	1025897
.
Kaohsiung	373394	1454764	2383943
Core	193279	1281226	1873940
Periphery	180115	173538	510003
.
Taichung	170851	890043	2640641
Core	170851	392727	1658427
Periphery	0	497316	982214
.
Tainan	229354	676593	1077341
Core	99191	373902	819485
Periphery	130163	302691	257856
.
Hsinchu	122137	243218	867536
Core	122137	243218	352619
Periphery	0	0	514917
.
Keelung	125077	265290	374914
Core	52464	135531	283013
Periphery	72613	129759	91901
.
Chiayi	148552	251840	270872
Core	148552	251840	270872
Periphery	0	0	0
.
Taoyuan	0	599504	1746823
Core	0	185257	1184980
Periphery	0	414247	561843

The top line number is that in 1955, less than a quarter of the population lived in a metro area while two thirds did in 2013.  Instead of 2.6 million, Taipei is redefined as 6.2 million.  It could be more if you were inclined to consider Keelung as part of Taipei.  I thought about that for a long time before deciding that Keelung is still a separate place.  It may not be for much longer.

According to my classification, Taichung, not Kaohsiung, is actually Taiwan’s second largest city.  Kaoshiung has a slightly larger core, but Taichung has a substantially larger periphery.  Even if you dispute the exact boundaries, the big point is that the common idea of Kaohsiung as clearly being Taiwan’s second largest city is wrong.  It used to be, but Taichung has caught up.  In 1955 and 1981, Tainan and Taichung jockeyed for the title of the third largest city.  Tainan lost that race and is no longer even number four.  Taoyuan has shot by and Hsinchu has almost caught up.

Let’s stop for a minute and consider Hsinchu.  It’s easy to miss Hsinchu’s growth because the Hsinchu metro area is split between Hsinchu City, Hsinchu County, and Miaoli County.  Also, note that Hsinchu has grown much faster after 1981.  The obvious explanation is the Hsinchu Science Park, which started operations in the early 1980s.  Think for a minute about the early section on legislative districts.  Did it strike you as odd that Hsinchu County was slated to gain a seat?  In fact, Hsinchu County has already passed Nantou and Chiayi Counties in population.  Historically, Nantou, Chiayi, and Miaoli were similarly sized, but unlike the other two, Miaoli has not experienced negative population growth.  Well, actually it has in most of the county.  Most of the county has seen the same sorts of negative growth that we see in the heartland areas.  However, the two townships adjacent to Hsinchu City, Jhunan 竹南鎮 and Toufen 頭份鎮, have added 60073 people since 1981, more than enough to give Miaoli overall positive growth.  When reapportionment arrives in 2018, Miaoli, unlike Nantou and Chiayi, will keep its second seat, and this will be due to the growth of the Hsinchu metro area.  The growth of Hsinchu is all the more striking when contrasted with the other two smaller cities, Keelung and Chiayi.  Both have grown, but Chiayi hasn’t even kept pace with overall population growth.  Keelung is perhaps even worse, given its proximity to Taipei.

Finally, there is Taoyuan.  In 1955, I really can’t identify a core city.  If I had been making this list in 1955, I would have chosen Ilan/Luodong 宜蘭市/羅東鎮, Changhua 彰化市, Pingtung 屏東市, and Hualian 花蓮市 before Taoyuan/Jhongli 桃園鎮/中壢鎮 as my next metro area.  The two weren’t all that densely populated and the Hakka/Minnan division would have made them much more distinct from each other than it does today.  Even today, there still isn’t a central urban area in Taoyuan in the same sense that there is in all the other metros.  Taoyuan is, however, a gigantic sprawl of fairly densely populated territory.  It adds up to a very large urbanized area, even if it doesn’t seem to have any focal point.  For 2013, I put Jhongli 中壢市, Pingjhen 平鎮市, and Bade 八德市 in the core.  It might be more accurate to put them in the periphery and leave the core with only the 415,414 people in Taoyuan City 桃園市.  If you’ve been to the Los Angeles area, Taoyuan metro is something like the Inland Empire.  It’s gritty, industrial, sprawling, and far removed from the “desirable” areas.  It’s also shockingly large; when considered on its own it is now one of the larger metro areas in the country.

LY considers restrictions on MAC

On Friday, something quite important may have happened.  At the legislature, party leaders agreed to put a fascinating item on the agenda for Tuesday.  The DPP and TSU will introduce a resolution limiting what Mainland Affairs Council Minister Wang Yu-chi can say or do at his upcoming meeting with Chinese counterparts.  Of course, the DPP and TSU don’t have the power to control the agenda.  Critically, the KMT party leaders and Speaker Wang also agreed to let this resolution come before the floor.  The details of the resolution can be found in this story, and, if you read Chinese, these two stories from the front pages of yesterday’s and today’s Liberty Times are a bit more detailed.

The Taipei Times story is on the bottom of page 3, and the United Daily News and China Times buried this story even further back.  They might be correct.  After all, it is quite possible that Tuesday’s legislative business will go unexpectedly slowly and this resolution will never make it off the calendar.  However, I think the Liberty Times’ front page treatment is probably appropriate, and not just because it meshes with their ideological preferences.  This story might be significant in several ways.

First, this resolution is a clear signal to cross-strait negotiators (on both sides) not to expect any major breakthroughs.  The elected politicians are telling the negotiators not to go too far.  They are also telling China not to bother pressing Taiwan for too much at this time.  Even if Minister Wang publicly supports something that China wants, such as the One China framework, they have been publicly notified that this position will be repudiated by the legislature as soon as he gets back.  It might be wiser to wait for another day than to force Taiwan to openly disavow a position.  This direct effect on cross-straits talks is probably the most important angle to the story.  To me, however, it is the least interesting.

Second, this resolution might reflect an adjustment in the relations between the executive and legislative branches.  In a sense, this is an effort to wrest control of a vital policy area away from the executive branch.  Before, the president had been in charge of deciding how fast relations with China could develop.  The legislature has just asserted its prerogative by setting the outer limits of what is acceptable.  That is, they are suggesting that the executive branch can take care of the little details, but the broad vision shall be determined by the legislature.

The closest parallel I can think of comes from American politics.  In the early 1970s, the Vietnam War was increasingly unpopular, and then Nixon ordered a major bombing campaign into Laos and Cambodia.  Congress was fed up with the president’s unilateral use of the American military and passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973, putting limits on the president’s power to use military force.  Congress argued that the US constitution gave them the right to declare war, so the president should not be able to have undeclared wars.  Every president since 1973 has replied that the resolution is unconstitutional, since it inhibits a president’s power to act as commander in chief.  The important point for us is that the power to use the American military had always been considered as one of the major pillars of presidential power.  In 1973, the legislature tried to pry some of that power away from the executive branch by asserting that they, not the president, had the right to determine the broad outlines (which major military conflicts the US would be involved in) of that area of power.  The current resolution in Taiwan is not quite so dramatic.  For one thing, the proposal is for a specific context, not for a general new law.  The resolution will only apply to this visit by Minister Wang.  It does not apply to other delegations that might negotiate in other places or times.  Even so, if the legislature passes the resolution next week, it will be asserting both some very concrete limits for Wang’s upcoming trip AND a more general right to set such limits whenever it sees fit.  I expect that the Ma administration will make at least a minor statement rejecting the legislature’s right to determine the basic course of cross-strait relations.

Third, this story lifts the covers just a little and gives a peek at the KMT’s intense intra-party conflagration.  The war between Ma and Wang is still running hot, even if it isn’t on the front pages these days.  Ma is still pursuing the court case, and there is a good chance that Wang won’t be able to finish out this term.  One of the main complaints from the Ma side about Wang is that he uses inter-party negotiations to get everything he wants.  Here again, the item was put on the agenda in inter-party negotiations, chaired by Wang.  In the Liberty Times stories, Wang says clearly that the KMT reps didn’t want to sign on to the original proposal.  It was only after some give and take that they agreed.  If you read between the lines just a little bit, you can see a resolution that Wang could have easily killed, had he so wished.  Instead, he kept the negotiations alive, cajoled the various sides to give a bit, and produced an agreement that President Ma will absolutely hate.  Wang may genuinely have different preferences than Ma, but it probably didn’t hurt that Ma is trying to politically assassinate him and that this resolution will place humiliating and potentially significant limitations on Ma’s executive branch.

Beyond the feud between Ma and Wang, this also exposes a rift between Ma and the overall KMT legislative caucus.  Putting these preemptive restrictions on Minister Wang basically equates to an admission by the KMT legislative caucus that it doesn’t trust him.  You rarely hear of this sort of thing, except in divided government.  The back channels of communication must not be working very well if the KMT caucus feels it has to send a public message.  President Ma and Minister Wang will hear the message, but so will all the voters.  One part of the KMT is telling the voters that there is a possibility that another part of the party might do something crazy and they are taking steps to ensure that doesn’t happen.  Unified parties don’t do things like this because that telling voters that powerful people in your party are irresponsible is a good way to lose elections.

I’m increasingly persuaded by the argument that Ma is driven by his historical legacy.  To use a more provocative phrase, Ma might have Nobel Fever.  If he does, he will want to do big things with China before he leaves office.  Rather than waiting for the time to be ripe, he needs to act now in the two years he has left.  He can probably already see the shadow of the lame duck creeping up on him, so he has no time to waste.  The rest of the party has a much longer timeline on China.  Their immediate priority is electoral.  They need to cozy back up to public opinion before this year’s elections, and the public is not clamoring for dramatic new agreements with China right now.  This puts Ma at odds with the mainstream of his party, and it seems that the mainstream might be taking precautions to prevent him from pursuing his goals at the expense of theirs.

The resolution might never reach the floor, though if it does I think it will pass.  There are a few extremist legislators who won’t mind going on record as wanting to allow Minister Wang (and the whole ROC government) to support One China or One Country, Two Regions.  However, most will be want to be closer to the median voter.  If they have to vote, they’ll vote for the resolution.  Even if Ma’s allies can mobilize enough support to keep the resolution off the floor, just by putting this item on the agenda the KMT caucus has sent a warning shot to the administration.

clan wars

In today’s useless post, I look at a question that might have mattered more two hundred years ago.  Which surnames are winning at politics?  If you are a certain party chair, you might think to yourself, “Why aren’t there more people named Su in politics?  There should be more Sus!”  If you are a certain southern mayor, you might think the same thing about Lais.  So who has the right to feel oppressed, and who should be smug about the wonderful past performance of their clan?

I am using my database of elections in Taiwan.  Keep in mind that the people you are familiar with count the same as the people even I have never heard of.  I haven’t started collecting village chiefs 村里長 data, but I have three election cycles of township council 鄉鎮市民代表 elections (plus a few earlier for a few counties).  These candidates make up about 47% of the database.  City and county councils are another 24%.  The famous people, including all the candidates for president, governor, municipal mayor, city mayor, and county magistrate (going back to 1957) are only about 1.6% of the total.

Of course, the most common surname in Taiwan politics is Chen 陳.  This is hardly a surprise, since Chen is the most common surname in Taiwan.  The interesting question is whether there are more Chens in politics than in society.  Do Chens win more than their fair share of seats?

In my short internet search, I only found population data for the top ten surnames.  So here is how the top ten did:

	Population%	Individuals%	Seat%	Seat/Pop
陳 Chen	11.13	11.36	11.47	1.030
林 Lin	8.30	8.72	9.18	1.106
黃 Huang	6.03	5.97	6.03	1.000
張 Chang	5.28	5.16	5.12	0.970
李 Lee	5.13	4.99	5.40	1.052
王 Wang	4.12	3.99	3.76	0.912
吳 Wu	4.04	3.82	3.71	0.919
蔡 Tsai	2.91	2.84	3.08	1.060
劉 Liu	3.16	2.87	3.02	0.956
楊 Yang	2.66	2.45	2.27	0.855

If your family name is Huang 黃, you should feel ok.  The Huangs didn’t do well, and they didn’t do badly.  Huang is represented at just about the appropriate level.  6.03% of the population is named Huang, and 6.03% of the seats were won by people named Huang.  Huangs are, well, average.

Among the top 10 families, Lins 林 are the big winners.  8.30% of people in Taiwan are named Lin.  If you look at individual politicians, 8.72% are named Lin.  (Individuals looks at individual people, not candidacies.  For example, LY Speaker Wang Jyn-ping 王金平 has run 12 times.  Here he counts as one person, not 12 candidacies.)  When Lins run in elections, they also do better than average, and they have won 9.18% of all the seats.  That gives a seat/population ratio of 1.106.  In other words, Lins have won 10.6% more seats than their fair share.

The biggest losers are the Yangs 楊, who only get 85.5% of the seats they might be expected to win.  In fact, in my dataset, the Yangs did so poorly that they aren’t even in 10^th place.  They were beaten by the Hsus 許, and by quite a large margin (741 to 633 seats).

 

Lin and Yang were the biggest winners and losers, respectively, in the top ten.  However, they don’t appear to be the biggest winners and losers overall.  This makes sense, as larger samples tend to have smaller variance.  Wang Jyn-ping and his twelve seats barely make a difference to the Wang statistics, as the other Wangs won 1034 seats.  However, if he were named Chin Wang-ping 金王平, his twelve wins would increase the Chin total from 31 to 43.  A single individual can make a big difference to a smaller name.

Since I don’t have population data, the way to evaluate the rest of the names is to see if the individuals who enter politics win lots of seats.  On average, each individual wins 0.988 seats.  There are two ways that individuals can win more seats.  First, they can run lots of times.  Second, they can have a good winning percentage.

My initial guess was that the Yu 余 family would be the most overrepresented.  I was thinking about Kaohsiung County and all the Yus who have run multiple times and almost always won.  Also, Yu is a fairly small surname, so it should be relatively sensitive to one outlier family.  I was wrong.  The Yu clan is just about average.  (So much for my expertise!)  Here are the top 50:

			Ind%	Runs/Ind	Win%	Seat%	seats/ind
all				1.91	0.515		0.988
1	陳	Chen	11.36	1.86	0.530	11.47	0.988
2	林	Lin	8.72	1.95	0.528	9.18	1.030
3	黃	Huang	5.97	1.92	0.514	6.03	0.989
4	張	Chang	5.16	1.92	0.505	5.12	0.971
5	李	Lee	4.99	1.95	0.544	5.40	1.058
6	王	Wang	3.99	1.85	0.496	3.76	0.920
7	吳	Wu	3.82	1.87	0.508	3.71	0.951
8	劉	Liu	2.87	1.92	0.535	3.02	1.029
9	蔡	Tsai	2.84	2.00	0.532	3.08	1.062
10	許	Hsu	2.54	1.94	0.528	2.66	1.023
11	楊	Yang	2.45	1.88	0.482	2.27	0.907
12	謝	Hsieh	1.90	1.84	0.509	1.82	0.935
13	鄭	Cheng	1.84	2.02	0.545	2.07	1.103
14	洪	Hung	1.60	1.94	0.543	1.71	1.051
15	邱	Chiu	1.57	1.85	0.523	1.56	0.969
16	曾	Tseng	1.56	1.88	0.487	1.46	0.914
17	郭	Kuo	1.41	2.01	0.538	1.55	1.083
18	徐	Hsu	1.32	1.85	0.524	1.31	0.968
19	賴	Lai	1.25	1.91	0.486	1.18	0.930
20	周	Chou	1.22	2.03	0.524	1.32	1.064
21	廖	Liao	1.17	1.88	0.522	1.17	0.982
22	葉	Yeh	1.09	2.00	0.519	1.16	1.039
23	高	Kao	1.04	1.85	0.447	0.88	0.828
24	蘇	Su	1.02	2.08	0.568	1.23	1.179
25	江	Chiang	1.00	2.08	0.517	1.10	1.077
26	呂	Lu	0.94	2.12	0.581	1.18	1.232
27	莊	Chuang	0.91	1.77	0.475	0.78	0.842
28	何	Ho	0.86	2.00	0.528	0.93	1.057
29	羅	Luo	0.86	1.92	0.491	0.83	0.943
30	簡	Chien	0.80	2.00	0.517	0.85	1.035
31	鍾	Chung	0.80	1.88	0.547	0.84	1.026
32	潘	Pan	0.75	1.85	0.519	0.74	0.958
33	蕭	Hsiao	0.71	1.80	0.514	0.68	0.926
34	朱	Chu	0.65	1.77	0.534	0.62	0.946
35	彭	Peng	0.64	1.78	0.448	0.52	0.798
36	游	You	0.63	2.09	0.557	0.75	1.168
37	詹	Chan	0.57	1.76	0.498	0.51	0.876
38	余	Yu	0.56	1.94	0.516	0.57	1.000
39	胡	Hu	0.56	1.74	0.462	0.46	0.804
40	柯	Ko	0.53	1.92	0.535	0.55	1.027
41	顏	Yen	0.51	2.06	0.542	0.59	1.116
42	盧	Lu	0.47	1.83	0.518	0.46	0.948
43	施	Shih	0.45	1.91	0.484	0.42	0.922
44	趙	Chao	0.43	1.87	0.425	0.35	0.795
45	沈	Shen	0.43	1.78	0.548	0.43	0.975
46	魏	Wei	0.36	1.97	0.547	0.39	1.078
47	梁	Liang	0.36	1.69	0.529	0.33	0.892
48	翁	Weng	0.33	1.96	0.522	0.35	1.021
49	戴	Dai	0.33	1.76	0.543	0.32	0.957
50	宋	Soong	0.32	1.97	0.453	0.29	0.890

 

The biggest loser on this table is the Chao 趙 clan, who only win .795 seats per individual.  However, Chao is a fairly small clan, so they will have larger swings.  For my money, the worst performance comes from the Kao 高 and Peng 彭 clans, which are far bigger than the Chaos and still only managed to win .828 and .798 seats per candidate.  To put that in perspective, if the Pengs had won the average of .988 seats per individual, they would have won 181 seats.  In fact, they only won 146 seats.  The Pengs and Kaos were slightly below average in running for office, but the main culprit is that the simply didn’t win enough times when they did run.  Their .447 and .448 winning percentages are the lowest on this table.  If we go off the table, #53 (Fang 方) is the first spot to do worse, at .440.  The worst winning percentage in the top 100 belongs to #92 (Chien 錢), at .354.  The most reluctant to run was #89 Kung 龔, at a mere 1.33 runs per candidate.  And the worst overall in the top 100 was #88 Tsou 鄒 at only .593 seats per individual.  If your family name appears in this paragraph, too bad for you!

What about the winners?  It’s time for the former vice president to gloat.  Lu 呂 is the champ.  Each Lu ran 2.12 times.  To beat that, you have to go all the way down to #61 (Lan 藍) at 2.19.  #96 Wu 伍 is the best in the top 100, at 2.33 campaigns per person.  Lu also had the best winning percentage in the top 50, at .581.  The first to top that was #56 Wen 溫 at .608.  #99 Chang 章 won 24 of 33 races, for the highest winning percentage in the top 100 (.727).  In all, members of the Lu clan won a stunning 1.232 seats per person.  With an average .988 seats per person, they would have had 264 positions.  In fact, they filled 329 offices!  To beat the Lu clan, you have to go all the way down to #97, where the (very small) Han 韓 clan won 1.611 seats per person.  Apparently, Lu is the ruling class!

 

Running again and again and again and…

In this blog, I spout out all kinds of speculative nonsense about Taiwanese elections.  In my real job, I do much more boring and sober analyses of the patterns of competition in elections.  To this end, I’ve been building the mother-lode database of Taiwanese elections.  Ultimately, I’d like to have data on every candidate in every election since the beginning of the ROC era.  I’m still a long way from that, but I’m pretty sure I have a bigger electronic database than any other scholar and maybe even bigger than the Central Election Commission’s.  For the most part, what isn’t already in my database only exists in hard copy (if at all) and is scattered all over the island.  Anyway, today I thought I’d share a little bit of fun trivia gleaned from this massive trove.  These are the types of details that will never make it into a real research paper or that casual observers would ever want to know.  It’s just that I’m an elections nerd, and these sorts of tidbits make me happy.

My database currently has 54121 lines, one for each candidacy.  For example, Lee Teng-hui 李登輝 has one line for his 1996 presidential run.  Huang Teng-hui 黃登輝 also has one line.  Huang ran for the National Assembly in 1991 under the banner of the Chinese Old Soldiers Unification Party 中華老兵統一黨.  He got 436 votes, just 5813263 fewer than his more famous namesake.  Chiang Teng-hui 江登輝 ran unsuccessfully four times for the Taitung County Assembly between 1986 and 2002.  And from the one of the most obscure corners of my dataset, there is also a Luo Teng-hui 羅登輝, who won two campaigns for the Kanting 崁頂鄉 Township Council in 1973 and 1978.

So my useless question for today is, who has run the most times?  It turns out that there are three people who are far out in front of everyone else.  Unless you are a true elections junkie, you aren’t going to guess them.  For most people, the first guess will probably be LY Speaker Wang Chin-ping 王金平.  That’s a very good guess, but his 12 campaigns only put him in a five-way tie for fifth place (the other four are Hsu Rong-shu 許榮淑, Huang Yu-chiao 黃玉嬌, Weng Chin-chu 翁金珠, and Chen Yuan-chi 陳原琦).  (If you are interested in victories, Wang’s 12 victories are two more than anyone else.  However, today we’re looking at getting on the ballot.)  Liao Hsueh-kuang 廖學廣 is in fourth place, with 13 candidacies.  Huang Yu-chiao ran her last race in 1998.  The other five also might be done, though it is possible they still might have one or two more campaigns in them.  However, it doesn’t seem likely that any of these will catch the top three.

Third place belongs to Fang Ching-chun 方景鈞 with 16 attempts at public office.  Like Speaker Wang, Fang has run in all 12 legislative elections since 1975.  He also ran three times for Taipei City Council and once for the National Assembly.  Fang is a retired high school teacher, and it appears that participating in the process is what drives him.  He doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in actually doing the dirty work necessary to win votes.  He got 5063 votes in his first campaign and has never broken even 2000 votes since then.  At 84 years old this year, he might be finished.

Let’s skip over second place and go straight to the champ.  Lin Ching-yuan 林景元 has a stunning 21 lines in my dataset, four more than anyone else.  To put it another way, 99.4% of the individual in my database have run 7 times or fewer.  Lin has tripled that mark.  In fact, this is underestimating Lin.  His Wikipedia page says he has run 27 times!  How do you do this?  Well, it helps to live a very long life and have a very long career.  Lin was born in 1925 and ran his first race in 1960.  He lost that race, and he would lose 25 other times.  Lin ran for pretty much every office.  In my database, he tried 3 times for the Provincial Assembly, 6 times for the legislature, once for the National Assembly, four times for the Kaohsiung Municipal Council, once for Kaohsiung County Magistrate, once for Kaohsiung City Mayor, and four times for the Kaoshiung County Assembly.  Wikipedia says he also ran for Fengshan Township mayor, but I don’t have those races before 1986.  (Incredibly, I don’t have anything for him for the entire 1970s, though I assume this probably reflects holes in my data rather than a mid-life crisis spent hiking through the Andes.)  His two wins came early.  He won seats in the Kaohsiung County Assembly in 1961 and 1964.  As his career went on, his vote totals got lower and lower.  This is part of the burden of the career turkey.  If people know you are a habitual loser, then they don’t take you seriously and any support you might have had looks elsewhere.  Losing usually feeds into more losing.  In 2012, Lin announced that that legislative campaign would be his last.

The second place finisher is my favorite, Lee Ching-wen　李景雯, who has run 17 times in my dataset and 20 overall.  (It is a weird little quirk that all of the top three share the character “ching” 景, or scenic view.  Maybe the seventh definition of the character is, “futile campaign.”)  Unlike the other two, Lee’s political career has been crammed into a fairly short period.  In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that politics is his post-retirement career.  His first run was in 1981, when he was already 53.  His other 19 runs came between 1989 and 2005.  I’m missing the three victorious campaigns for the Pingtung Township Council (1990, 1994, 1998), but I do have records of his two tries at the Provincial Assembly, five runs at the legislature, two stabs at the National Assembly, three shots at Pingtung City Mayor, four attempts to become the Pingtung County Magistrate, and one go at the Pingtung County Assembly.  What I like about Lee is that he was not just playing politics.  Unlike Lin, Fang, and countless other less persistent turkeys, Lee actually went out and got some votes.  He is the rare person who got a reputation as a loser but still managed to overcome that albatross and increase his support over time.  In the early 1990s, he was usually under 5000 votes, but in the late 1990s he was regularly surpassing 10000.  In 2002, after over a decade of constantly trying to move up from the township council, he finally managed to win a seat in the county assembly.  It was a great triumph, the result of a long, slow, steady decade of hard political work.  And then he did what has to be my favorite detail of all.  After defying the odds and successfully climbing this mountain, when he decided in 2005 that he still had one more campaign in him, did he run for re-election?  Of course not.  He ran for county magistrate instead.  He lost, of course.  But did you really expect him to try to rescale the same mountain when a bigger, more hopeless one beckoned?

 

 

the open revolving door

I’m very worried about the abuses that can occur when ROC officials who negotiate with China also do business in China.  There is a clear motive and opportunity for China to give them special treatment in business dealings in exchange for agreeing to more favorable regulations on cross-straits activities.  An excellent article in the Liberty Times points out that Taiwan facilitates such corruption by not extending the normal revolving door provisions to officials in the Straits Exchange Foundation.  Most officials are prohibited from engaging in business in industries regulated by their ministry for three years after leaving their post.  Since SEF officials are already technically retired, the government’s position is that there is no need to worry about their next jobs.  Of course, this is ludicrous.  SEF officials are not actually retired; they are actively on the job.  However, the more important effect is that since the revolving door provision doesn’t extend to the SEF, it also does not extend to the family members of SEF officials.  Well, that couldn’t possibly lead to anything improper, could it?

Sell! Sell! Sell!

[Warning: This post comes from the irresponsible and conspiratorial side of my brain.  The rational and cautious side disavows it completely.]

Sometimes I think of politicians like a stock for which the price is based on whether I think they can eventually win the presidency.  Every time they say or do something, I revise my evaluation of them up or down a bit.  For example, right now I think that Eric Chu 朱立倫 and Tsai Ing-wen 蔡英文 have the best chance to be the next president, so their stocks are the highest in my mental model.  They are somewhere near 80.  Tainan Mayor William Lai 賴清德 is many years away from a presidential run, but it is in the realm of possibility.  His stock is around 40.  When he was elected four years ago it was probably 45 or so, but he hasn’t produced much news and his standing in my brain has stagnated a bit.  Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu 陳菊 has gone in the opposite direction.  She was probably at 25-30 four years ago, but I’ve been impressed with the energy of her first term.  Most notably, she recently demonstrated tremendous political courage in daring to start a fight with one of Taiwan’s major corporations over environmental pollution.  She has roared ahead of Lai in my mental stock market, to about 45.  Younger people are also included.  Most politicians are at zero (sorry Apollo Chen 陳學聖 and Chen Ming-wen 陳明文), but every so often you can imagine a very long but slightly plausible path for a very young politician.  I can just about imagine Hsieh Kuo-liang 謝國樑 serving two terms as Keelung Mayor, getting promoted to Interior Minister and Vice Premier, then getting drafted to run for New Taipei City Mayor, and finally winning the presidency.  It’s highly unlikely, but just plausible enough that I’ll give him a price of 0.75.  Anyway, this is a fun game to play, even if I’m just guessing wildly.

One person I’ve been readjusting my price on quite a bit lately is Sean Lien 連勝文.  Recently, his price has been going up because it is looking more and more like he will be the next Taipei Mayor, and Taipei Mayors are almost automatically presidential contenders.  Today, however, he took a big plunge in my mental market.

Lien has not yet officially announced his candidacy, and he tells us that one of the reasons is that he is concerned for his family’s safety.  Fine, even if I can’t relate to how oppressive it must be to live in Taiwan’s most exclusive community because no other luxury residence has adequate security, I guess it makes a little sense.  Rich people live in fear of their children being kidnapped, or something like that.  (What? Am I supposed to have more sympathy for the trials of wealth?)  And, as he reminded us, he was actually shot in the face, so this is not just some abstract idea for him.

But then he added the detail that made me question whether he’s got what it takes in politics.  Over the past three years, he claims to have gotten over 300 letters threatening either him or his family.  Ten of them were death threats.  A couple were posted from Hong Kong in order to make tracing the source more difficult.

Why would anyone want to kill Sean Lien?  He hasn’t offered an answer to this.  In 2010 when he was shot, he never suggested a motive.  However, right after he was shot, the spokesperson for the Lien family immediately claimed that the shooting was not random or aimed at someone else.  They seemed to think that Lien was the target, not an innocent bystander.  But why?

It could be that there is a crazy stalker.  But after 300 letters and with all the financial might of the Lien family, don’t you think they’d have found that guy by now?  And if it were a single crazy person, Lien would probably just tell us about it.

Is Lien paranoid?  That doesn’t bode well for his political future.  Is he just making it up?  That might work in the short run, but secrets often come out over time.  Either of these would be a very bad sign for Lien’s long-term political career.

The only other answer that seems likely to me is that organized crime is involved.  Lien has extensive financial dealings both in Taiwan and China.  I wonder if he has stepped on the wrong toes.  Being connected to organized crime is not a great way to appeal for votes unless you are the Justice Minister and are trying to put crime lords in prison.  I’m pretty sure Sean Lien is not the Justice Minister.  That leaves the possibility of shady dealings with shady people leading to shady threats of violence.

This, of course, is baseless speculation.  What I don’t like about Sean Lien’s comments yesterday is that he invited me to have this train of thought.  Successful politicians generally try to focus attention on their strongest points and distract attention away from closets full of skeletons.  Lien is still the odds-on favorite to win the mayoral election.  However, I am starting to wonder whether he has the self-awareness and discipline to routinely give boring comments to the press.  (Eric Chu is fantastic at this.)  If he keeps adding little snippets like the 300 death threats to his normal statements, eventually the media will play the gotcha game.  I revised Lien’s stock downward today, not because I think anyone is going to beat him this year, but because I think there is a real chance he might self-destruct long before he gets to the presidential election.  Sell!

Is this plan B?

So the government is apparently just going to go ahead with testing at the 4th nuclear power plant.  They even have plans to insert fuel rods.  Didn’t they promise to ask the voters before doing this?  Does this mean that they have abandoned the referendum idea?  Did I miss that press release?  I thought that the promise of a vote was one of the core premises of Premier Jiang Yi-huah’s cabinet.  I’m a bit confused.

 

[Edit: One day later, the Liberty Times is asking the same question.]

wide open KMT field in Changhua

The incumbent Changhua County magistrate is in his second term and not eligible to run for re-election, so the field is wide open.  I mean, really wide open.  According to a China Times story, 10(!) people are trying to win the KMT nomination for Changhua County magistrate.  They are:

1. Lin Tsang-min 林滄敏 (legislator)
2. Wang Mei-hui 王美惠 (legislator)
3. Hsiao Ching-tien 蕭景田 (former legislator)
4. Chen Chieh 陳杰 (former legislator)
5. Chen Wen-han 陳文漢 (Hsihu Town mayor)
6. Ke Cheng-fang 柯呈枋 (deputy magistrate)
7. Lin Tian-fu 林田富 (deputy magistrate)
8. Chan Ming-rui 詹明叡 (county finance bureau chief)
9. Huang Chun-tao 黃君韜 (former county government executive secretary)
10. Tsai Chih-hung 蔡志宏 (former county government executive secretary)

Now that’s a big field.  I don’t really have anything insightful to say about this field. I suppose the nomination is worth fighting for, since the KMT has a fairly good shot at winning Changhua.  It’s not a lock given the national trends, but the KMT has usually won this county.  I also can’t remember seeing so many bureaucrats from the same administration launching bids.  Usually the incumbent wants a third term and throws his support behind a specific person, often the deputy magistrate.  That doesn’t seem to be the case here.  Anyway, I’d expect one of the professional politicians to emerge, probably Lin Tsang-min.  But who knows.

bureaucrats as candidates

The KMT is still trying to decide its nominations for mayoral positions, including positions for three of the biggest prizes, Taipei City, New Taipei City, and Taichung City.  In all three of these, there are hints that the KMT is considering nominating a bureaucrat rather than a local politician.

In Taichung City, Jason Hu 胡志強 might run for re-election.  However, he might be wise to step aside.  The polls show that he is the KMT’s strongest candidate, but they also show him losing to the DPP nominee, Lin Chia-lung 林佳龍.  At this point four years ago Hu had an enormous lead in the polls, and he still only managed a razor-thin victory.  Losing winnable races is often fatal to a politician’s career; Hu might want to declare that 13 years as mayor is enough and let someone else carry the KMT flag.  There are a lot of KMT politicians lining up for the nomination.  Hu seems to be trying to position his former deputy mayor and current deputy Interior Minister Hsiao Chia-chi 蕭家淇 to get the nomination.

In New Taipei City, Eric Chu 朱立倫 can also run for re-election.  However, he might decide to forgo re-election and run for the presidency instead.  If he does, the leading candidates (in the media speculation) are a couple of bureaucrats, deputy mayor and former head of the National Police Commission Hou You-yi 侯友宜 and Interior Minister Lee Hung-yuan 李鴻源.

In Taipei City, all the speculation has swirled around Lien Chan’s 連戰 son, Sean Lien 連勝文.  However, in the wake of the September struggle in which the Liens took a stance clearly opposed to President Ma, it is possible that Ma will try to throw the nomination to someone else.  A year ago, it looked like Premier Jiang Yi-huah 江宜樺 was being groomed for the job, but his current unpopularity makes that unlikely.  As in Taichung, there is no shortage of KMT politicians lining up for this position.  Unfortunately for Ma, the strongest of them, legislator Ting Shou-chung 丁守中, has also been openly critical of Ma and has some ties to Lien Chan.  A media report about a week ago suggested that Ma was trying to position his former deputy mayor Ou Chin-der 歐晉德 for the nomination.

(A quick aside.  It does look to me like Ma is trying very hard to deny Lien the nomination.  The last couple of weeks have seen a spate of stories about Lien’s finances and dealings in China, his possible vulnerability in the polls, and his potentially controversial residency in Taipei’s most expensive housing complex.  These stories might be unrelated, but I am suspicious.)

 

Would the KMT be wise to turn to bureaucrats as candidates?  How have bureaucrats done in the past?  My quick impression was that they were generally lousy candidates.  Running for political office is difficult.  It takes a special set of skills that need to be honed.  It also helps to have an extensive network of people, and this usually takes years to put together.  However, I decided that I should probably take a closer look at the historical record.  I looked for instances in which the KMT nominated a bureaucrat with no previous electoral experience in that district.  I only looked at single seat districts.  This list probably doesn’t cover everyone, but it should get most of them.

 

year	Name	Positions held	Vote	win
1995	蕭萬長 Vincent Siew	Minister: Economics, CEPD, MOFA	51.7	Y
1997	謝深山 Hsieh Shen-shan	Minister: Labor Affairs	38.7	N
1997	許惠祐 Hsu Huei-you	Dep. Sec. Gen.: SEF	30.1	N
1997	林志成 Lin Chih-cheng	新竹市政府計畫室主任, Hsinchu City Government	42.8	Y
1998	馬英九 Ma Ying-jeou	Minster: Justice, WO Portfolio	51.1	Y
2001	葉金鳳 Yeh Chin-feng	Minister: Interior, Justice, WO Portfolio	42.0	N
2001	吳清基 Wu Ching-chi	Dep. Minister: Education	44.5	N
2001	胡志強 Jason Hu	Minister: GIO, MOFA	49.1	Y
2001	江清馦 Chiang Ching-hsien	Dep. Gov. of Taiwan Prov.; Dep. Minister: Interior	34.7	N
2002	黃俊英 Huang Chun-ying	Dep. Mayor, Kaohsiung City	46.9	N
2008	廖正井 Liao Cheng-ching	Dep. Magistrate, Taoyuan	54.6	Y
2009	杜麗華 Du Li-hua	Director, Agriculture, Hualien County Govt	25.4	N
2010	朱立倫 Eric Chu	Dep. Premier	52.6	Y
2012	江啟臣 Chiang Chi-chen	Minister: GIO	44.8	Y

 

This is a quite diverse list.  I think we can put them into three groups.

First, there are the superstars.  These are the media darlings, people who had a national profile before plunging into electoral politics.  Ma Ying-jeou, Vincent Siew 蕭萬長, and Jason Hu were all national figures being groomed for greater things when they ran.  Eric Chu had a similarly high profile, though he is arguably different, having already won three elections in Taoyuan before becoming Vice Premier.  All four of these won their elections, though none of them managed to do so in landslide fashion.  One might argue that they faced unusually tough competition, but, except for Siew, they were fighting on turf that the KMT generally wins.  I’d judge this group of candidates as competent but well short of excellent.

(I’m ignoring the DPP because it hasn’t nominated many bureaucrats for elected office.  The most notable case is Tsai Ing-wen 蔡英文 in 2010.  She fits very nicely in group 1 as a media superstar who produced an ok campaign.)

Second, there are the high-ranking but far less famous bureaucrats.  This group includes Hsieh Shen-shan 謝深山, Hsu Huei-you 許惠祐, Yeh Chin-feng 葉金鳳, Wu Ching-chi 吳清基, and Chiang Chi-chen 江啟臣.  Chiang was the only winner, and he managed a mere 44% of the vote.  Chiang also had the benefit of a family with extensive electoral connections.  Wu also didn’t do badly, considering the KMT’s weakness in Tainan County.  However, the other three were pretty lousy.  Yeh and Hsieh both lost races that the KMT probably should have won in Changhua and Taipei Counties.  In both races, the KMT probably should have been at least 10% higher.  Hsu delivered one of the worst KMT runs in the democratic era.  The DPP split, and two DPP candidates entered the race (neither was an incumbent).  Somehow, this did not throw the Nantou County government to the KMT.  In fact, Hsu managed to finish third behind both of them.  Overall, I’d rate this group of candidates as well below average.

The third group is made of local and unknown national bureaucrats, including Lin Chih-cheng 林志成, Chiang Ching-hsien 江清馦, Huang Chun-ying 黃俊英, Liao Cheng-ching 廖正井, and Du Li-hua杜麗華.  This group fared somewhat similarly to the first group.  Liao won his race (though he soon lost the seat due to a vote-buying conviction).  Huang lost his race, but performed respectably enough that he got another shot four years later.  (He lost that one, too.)  The other three were terrible.  Lin Chih-cheng managed to get walloped in a head-to-head race on solidly blue turf.  Du Li-hua got wiped out by the PFP candidate.  Chiang Ching-hsien never really had a chance to win in Chiayi County, but an average candidate would have easily broken 35%.  As with group 2, this group rates well below average.

The lesson seems to be that superstars can be acceptable candidates, but lower ranked bureaucrats will probably not do well.  It is notable that none of these bureaucrats posted a spectacular or even clearly above average result.  Moreover, these are only the ones that were nominated.  Lots of other bureaucrats were eliminated earlier in the process.  For example, Mayor Ma wanted his deputy Yeh Chin-chuan 葉金川 to succeed him, but Hau Lung-bin 郝龍斌 easily defeated Yeh for the KMT nomination.  Presumably, the bureaucrats listed in the table are the strongest politicians from the pool of potential aspirants.  Overall, the strongest bureaucrat-turned-politicians have been acceptable candidates, while the weakest have been outright miserable.

 

What does this say of the current set of potential candidates?  In Taipei City, Ou Chin-der probably has no chance.  Even if Ma did put all his prestige behind Ou, Sean Lien would probably be able to swat him aside.  If Ou somehow did get the nomination, he would almost certainly be a weak candidate.  This is one of the very few scenarios in which the DPP would have a chance at winning Taipei City.  Realistically, the Ou rumor was probably not even a serious trial balloon.

Hsiao Chia-chi is a much more realistic possibility in Taichung.  However, the above table should give the KMT pause.  Hsiao is nowhere near a media superstar.  He looks much more like the politicians in groups 2 and 3.  The KMT would probably do better to nominate an aspirant with more electoral experience.

New Taipei City is the most intriguing.  Lee Hung-yuan and Hou You-yi are both well-known, but they are clearly short of the group 1 fame level.  Right now, the polls show Hou doing better than Lee.  Last week’s UDN poll showed Hou beating DPP nominee Yu Shyi-kun 游錫堃 while Lee was losing to Yu.  I wonder, however, if Lee might end up being the more formidable of the two.  Neither has run for elected office, but Lee comes from a local political family.  His father was a township mayor, and his brother has won several legislative elections.  Hou would start with a bit more popularity, but Lee would start with more electoral skills.  I wouldn’t expect either of them to be a spectacular candidate, but either might turn out to be good enough.