A few interesting district races

I have barely written anything at all this year about the legislative races. So I feel I should write a little something on this topic before Election Day.

The DPP has won majorities in the last two general elections. There are 113 seats in the legislature, so you need 57 for a majority. In 2016, the DPP won 68 seats, and its ally, the NPP, won an additional five seats. That’s a comfortable majority. In 2020 they didn’t do quite so well, winning 61 seats. By this time, the NPP was not really an ally anymore, so we can’t count their three seats in with the DPP bloc. 61 seats is a working majority, but it isn’t comfortable. Fortunately for the DPP, they managed to stay fairly unified, so they were able to pass most of their agenda.

The common thread in those two elections was that the DPP won the presidency by a large margin. In 2016 Tsai got 56% of the vote; in 2020 it was 57%. Not everyone who voted for Tsai also voted for the DPP district legislative candidate, but a lot did. Tsai pulled several legislative candidates into office on her sizable coattails. [Aside: I think of Tsai as more of a northern politician and Lai as more of a southern politician, but let’s take a minute to note that the DPP swept every seat in the South in both of Tsai’s victories.]

No one is expecting Lai to win by such a significant margin. Even if he does win, most people think that he will get under 50%. Most of the legislative races are basically one-on-one contests, so most winners will need to get a majority. The key will be how TPP voters break in the legislative races. The TPP has not nominated a candidate in most districts, so most Ko supporters will have to choose between a KMT and DPP legislative candidate. Four years ago, most TPP party list voters supported the DPP district candidate. This year it seems likely that more of them will go for the KMT candidate. In short, there probably aren’t going to be enough votes for many of the DPP candidates.

I’m going to present three types of seeds. First, I’ll who did some districts that I think are very likely to change parties. Second, I’ll go through a few districts that I think are more likely to change hands than to stay with their current party. Finally, I’ll look at two districts that I find particularly interesting.

Very Likely to Change Hands

Taitung County

This is a traditional KMT stronghold, but the DPP’s Liu Chao-hao 劉櫂豪 has somehow managed to win it twice in a row. However, he lost the nomination polling primary to longtime rival Lie Kuen-cheng 賴坤成. Liu did not accept defeat well; he is running as an independent. It was already a difficult district for the DPP, and now it is nearly impossible. The KMT will win this seat.

Taipei 4

Four years ago, incumbent KMT legislator Lee Yen-hsiu 李彥秀 lost this seat in a very close race to the DPP nominee Kao Chia-yu 高嘉瑜. This year is a rematch, with Lee trying to regain her former seat. Kao has had a fairly stormy term. A lot of green voters have never forgiven her for playing footsie with Ko during the 2018 mayoral campaign, and she’s made more headlines for being cute than for substantive achievements. Lee meanwhile, won a seat on the city council with an overwhelming vote, and looks very, very strong.

New Taipei 8

At least one member of the extended Chang-Chiang-Chao 張江趙 family has held a seat in the legislature from Zhonghe since 1992. Years ago, I wrote about factional politics in this district, and this clan has been at the center of it for decades. Zhonghe is traditionally a very blue area, with lots of military villages and mainlanders. This is slowly changing as the military villages are being rebuilt and more and more outsiders are moving into the area, but Zhonghe remains more blue than green. The DPP has somehow won this seat in the last two elections, a fact that I attribute to Tsai’s large coattails and their local candidate, Chiang Yung-chang 江永昌. However, he is not running for reelection. Instead of a candidate with deep local ties and a long record of winning elections here, the DPP is nominating an outsider who has never won anything. Justin Wu Cheng 吳崢 lost races for the Taipei City Council in 2018 and 2022, the first time representing the NPP and the second time as an independent. He is young, handsome, and very well spoken, and he is about to get steamrolled by the KMT nominee. Chang Chih-lun’s 張智倫 father is Chang Ching-chung張慶忠, who served three terms in the legislature. (Yes, that guy. He played a major role in sparking off the sunflower movement.) His mother Chen Chin-ting陳錦錠 has served 8 terms in the Taipei County / New Taipei City council. I will be shocked if this race is even close.

The KMT is a near lock to win those three races. The next set of districts are ones that the incumbent party will probably lose, but it still has a fighting chance.

Somewhat likely to change parties

Keelung

The incumbent DPP legislator Tsai Shih-ying isn’t running for reelection. Keelung leans blue, but Tsai managed to win two terms through a combination of president Tsai’s coattails, lousy KMT candidates, and third party candidates who took KMT votes. This year the DPP is nominating their third choice. Their first choice was for Tsai to run for reelection, but he announced early on that he wouldn’t do that. Then the person who won the nomination had to withdraw due to a scandal. So they turned to Cheng Wen-ting 鄭文婷, a city councilor. She seems like a fairly generic DPP politician. The KMT candidate Lin Pei-hsiang林沛祥, on the other hand, has a stunning pedigree. His father, Lin Shui-mu 林水木, was mayor from 1989 to 1997. His mother, Hsu Shao-ping 徐少萍, served 6 terms in the legislature. On paper, this seems like an easy KMT victory. The only reason I’m not putting it up with the previous three races is that this isn’t the first time Lin Pei-hsiang has dipped his toe into politics. He has tried several times before, failing to win the KMT nomination each time. Given his family background, losing at that stage seems impossible. I wonder if there’s something about him that turns people off.

Taichung 5

Four years ago, when the DPP won this race, it was perhaps the biggest upset in the country. This district had reliably voted blue in nearly every previous election; it was usually the bluest part of the city. The longtime legislator Lu Hsiu-yen 盧秀燕 had just been elected mayor, and she was replaced in the by-election with an easy victory by another KMT stalwart Shen Chih-hui 沈智慧. Chuang Ching-cheng莊競程 had no previous electoral experience, so his victory over Shen in 2020 came completely out of the blue (pun intended 😊). Chuang hasn’t been a particularly notable legislator; I can’t say much either positive or negative about his tenure in office. Maybe he’s been doing a great job at constituency service. To be honest, I can’t tell you much about his opponent 黃健豪either. Still, until proven otherwise, I’m going to assume that the default choice for this district is KMT.

Other districts that might flip:

Taichung 2 (incumbent party: DPP)

Taoyuan 6 (independent, but cooperates with DPP)

Taipei 5 (DPP)

New Taipei 1 (KMT)

New Taipei 12 (DPP)

Taoyuan 4 (KMT)

Changhua 1 (DPP)

Changhua 3 (KMT)

I could go on listing seats, because unlike in many other countries, not many of the seats in Taiwan are actually “safe.” Since Taiwan started using this new electoral system in 2008, most of the 73 district seats have changed parties at one point or another. I tallied it up a few years ago, and I don’t remember the exact result, but it was something like only 20 or 25 seats had never changed parties. And many of those saw at least one very close election.

The two most interesting districts

There are two districts I find more interesting than all the others.

Hsinchu City

The media hasn’t really singled out a particular race as the glamour race this year, but I would choose Hsinchu City. The incumbent is KMT legislator Cheng Cheng-chien鄭正鈐, and he is running for reelection. I consider him to be a very weak incumbent. He ran in both 2016 and in 2020. The first time, in a three-way race, he got 36.5% and lost. The second time, in another 3-way race, he got 37.0%, but this was enough to win. It’s just not a very impressive record, especially considering Hsinchu is traditionally a fairly blue city. The DPP has nominated Lin Chih-chieh林志潔, a professor at a local university. My wife thinks she’s fairly charismatic, but I’m a little more skeptical. This isn’t the resume of your average electoral juggernaut.

In recent years, third parties have done quite well in Hsinchu. The third party in both the previous legislative elections was the NPP, which garnered 16.6% in 2016 and 28.6% in 2020. And let’s not forget that the TPP won the mayoral race in 2022 with 45.0%, though much of that probably came from strategic voting by KMT supporters. I don’t think either the NPP or TPP actually has that much support in Hsinchu. I think they are drawing from the same block of voters, and those voters are anti-establishment rather than pro-NPP or pro-TPP. What makes this year particularly compelling is that both the NPP and TPP are running credible candidates. The NPP’s nominee is Handy Chiu Hsien-chih邱顯智. He was the candidate here in 2016, he is currently a legislator on the party list, and he has been the NPP party chair. He should have some votes. However, the anti- establishment bloc of voters might swing heavily to the other candidate in the race. Ko Mei-lan 柯美蘭 is officially running as an independent candidate rather than as a TPP nominee, but she’s not fooling anyone. Her brother is kind of a big deal in that party: some former surgeon named Ko Wen-je.

So you have a weak incumbent, a political novice from the other major party, one of the few credible politicians left in the dying NPP, and a presidential candidate’s sister. Cheng and Lin will probably both break 30%, Chiu will probably come in fourth place, and Ko is a complete wild card. I haven’t got a clue who’s going to win this race.

Nantou 1

It pains me to write about this race for two reasons. This race isn’t a great advertisement for Taiwanese democracy, and that hurts me because this is one of my home districts. This district has two large towns, Puli 埔里and Caotun 草屯, and I lived in Caotun for three years in the early 90s.

The DPP nominee Tsai Ming-hsuan 蔡銘軒 is a county counselor, and I’m sure he’s a nice fellow, but I’m really not interested in him at all. This race is all about the KMT incumbent, Ma Wen-chun馬文君. Her father was a member of the Provincial Assembly, and her younger brother was elected to the National Assembly, but she has had a far better political career than either of them.

The first time I saw her was in 1994, when I went to the Nantou County assembly to watch a session from the visitors’ gallery. Everything was in Taiwanese, so I didn’t understand a word that was being said. In a sea of drab middle-aged men, she was a gorgeous young (still in her 20s, just a few years older than me) woman who confidently grilled government officials. Let’s just say she stood out from the crowd.

Ma served several terms in the county assembly, and then she was elected mayor of Puli twice. When president Ma tapped Wu Den-yi (the most famous politician to come out of Caotun) to be premier in 2009, Ma Wen-chun won his seat in the legislature in the ensuing by-election. She has been reelected three times, and none of the elections were that close. Caotun usually votes similarly in presidential and legislative elections, that is, slightly blue. Puli, however, usually gives her much more support than it gives the KMT presidential candidate. Perhaps because it’s further inland and more isolated, people in Puli seem to have a much stronger local identity. Historically, they have voted very strongly for local candidates from all parties. With her blue leaning district, solid record of constituency service, and personal popularity in Puli, Ma should be a shoe-in for reelection in 2024.

But I wouldn’t be writing about this race if it were that simple.

Ma is facing two serious attacks. First, she is accused of illegally building a mansion for herself on public land. Charges of corruption of this sort are not great for your career, but they are not that unusual and they’re usually survivable. Several other candidates are being accused of similar things in this election cycle alone. (It does make the KMT’s barrage of attacks on William Lai’s far more modest house look a bit hypocritical.) Second, and far more seriously, she has been accused leaking information about Taiwan’s domestic submarine program to a foreign government. She allegedly obtained this classified information in a closed-door hearing in the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. She has denied any wrongdoing, and the KMT has said it’s all a smear campaign. For the record, she was an outspoken opponent of the submarine program, and she tried several times to cut its budget.

I can’t remember it any previous case of a legislator simultaneously facing accusations of corruption and violations of national security. This is unprecedented. I don’t have any idea how the voters will take this. These are serious accusations, and they might throw her out of office. Or they might circle the wagons, insisting that their local hero is being unfairly attacked. I’m not happy that we have the opportunity to find out.