The DPP and Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je have announced their support for a slate of candidates they are calling the Capitol Progressive Alliance. The CPA includes candidates from very different parts of the political spectrum, including some from the deep blue end. They don’t all support Tsai for president, and the DPP has explicitly not made that a condition for its support. Of course, it is an open question as to whether DPP supporters will actually vote for some of these candidates. The slate is as follows:
Taipei 1: Wu Si-yao 吳思瑤 (DPP)
Taipei 2: Pusuya Yao 姚文智 (DPP)
Taipei 3: Billy Pan 潘建志 (IND)
Taipei 4: Huang Shan-shan 黃珊珊 (PFP)
Taipei 5: Freddy Lim 林昶佐 (NPP)
Taipei 6: Fan Yun 范雲 (SDP)
Taipei 7: Yang Shih-chiu 楊實秋 (IND, formerly KMT)
Taipei 8: Lee Ching-yuan 李慶元 (IND, formerly NP, PFP, and KMT)
The big omission is in Taipei 3, where the CPA snubbed SDP candidate Lee Yan-jung in favor of Billy Pan. They defended this decision by citing public opinion, saying that Pan was clearly leading Lee in the polls.
How many of these eight are likely to win? Yao is an incumbent in Taipei 2, and he is the only one I feel confident about. Huang Shan-shan claims to have opened up a 15% lead on her opponent in Taipei 3, but I am a bit skeptical of this. It is unlikely that the alliance could win in either Taipei 1 or 5, but it is not so unlikely that a victory in either of those two would qualify as an electoral miracle. The other four districts would take a miracle.
Frozen Garlic 
December 9, 2015 at 9:37 am |
I think in retrospect, DPP should have nominated its own candidates in most of these Taipei districts. In a wave election like this one, party ID is enough to get a lot of marginal district candidates elected. Instead, you are asking voters to actually find the 3rd party or independent candidates on the ballots.
I’m watching Taipei 1 pretty closely because that’s where I used to live in Taiwan (I’m in the US now). This district is probably going to Tsai by single digits (just my guess). DPP and TSU combined won the majority of the votes in City Council election in 2014. If KMT holds on in this district, it would imply significant ticket splitting in the district. Is that plausible? I know the legislator is fairly popular but I’m guessing he has to run 5 or 6% better than the Chu-Wang ticket to survive.
December 9, 2015 at 11:46 pm |
Now an all-DPP slate does seem like it could stand a better chance than this alliance, but IMHO, back in the spring when the party settled on this strategy, everyone still expected a solid KMT campaign and didn’t think the DPP would get this popular. The Taipei DPP in particular seems so used to minority status it can’t imagine being the majority party here; part of its thinking was how far its city councilors lagged behind Ko in the ’14 election (though they did all get seats, a nifty achievement).
December 23, 2015 at 8:16 pm |
[…] in Mandarin 凍蒜 （dong4suan4 / ㄉㄨㄥˋ ㄙㄨㄢˋ） has a good piece on this here and does a spectacular job of election and campaign coverage in […]