The election results and what’s next

There were no big winners and no big losers in yesterday’s election. All three parties got something, but none of them got everything they wanted or hoped for. The DPP kept the presidency, but it got far fewer votes than the previous two elections and lost its majority in the legislature. The KMT didn’t win the presidency, but it did come in second. More importantly, it won a lot of legislative seats and is now the biggest party in the legislature. However, it didn’t win an outright majority. The TPP came in third in the presidential race, but it was a strong third. The TPP held on to almost all of its potential votes. We won’t know for sure about strategic voting until we get some survey results, but it looks like there wasn’t much strategic voting at all. However, the TPP’s biggest win was in the legislative election. They didn’t win any districts, though all their district candidates ran far ahead of my expectations. But what really matters is that their eight party list seats put them in a pivotal position in the legislature. Neither major party has a majority without the cooperation of the TPP. At the end of the night, none of the parties was celebrating wildly or sobbing distraughtly.

The KMT’s election results might be the most interesting. They have now failed to break 40% in three consecutive presidential elections. That’s not good. They will rationalize this defeat by talking about how Ko split the anti-DPP vote. However, they should be asking themselves why they were unable to defend that vote. A successful political party goes out and wins votes; it doesn’t just wait for the other party to mess up. Protest votes are not a foundation for sustained success.

Nevertheless, votes against the other major party are definitely useful in the short term. The KMT did quite well in legislative races this time, winning 14 more seats than four years ago. However, because they didn’t win an outright majority, they didn’t actually increase their power by that much. It reminds me somewhat of the DPP in 2009 and 2010, when they won a lot more votes than in the previous local election cycle. This improved result was enough to keep Tsai Ing-wen in office as party chair. But they didn’t actually win much more power; the only local government to change hands was Ilan, which is not exactly the biggest or most important local governments in the country. The KMT will have more power in the legislature, but not as much as some people might think. The next speaker will probably be from the KMT, but the TPP could probably veto Han Kuo-yu if it wanted to. The KMT will win more committee seats and committee convener seats. However, the speaker is not nearly as powerful in Taiwan as in some other countries, and the KMT will not be able to unilaterally arrange the agenda. Even if there is a working KMT-TPP coalition, the legislative rules give minority parties some power, so the DPP caucus will have a bit of influence. The KMT was hardly an afterthought in the current legislature, and the DPP will not be powerless in the next legislature.

Ko Wen-je didn’t win the presidential election. His 26.5% was more than many people expected, but it still put him in 3^rd place. Nevertheless, Ko is one of the winners in this election. He delivered nearly all of his presidential vote to his legislative party list. The 22.1% party list votes earned the TPP 8 seats. That makes the TPP the smallest party in the next legislature, but those eight seats will have a massive impact on how the next four years unfold. There are 113 seats in the legislature so a majority requires 57. The KMT has 54 seats (including the two independents who are reliable KMT votes), and the DPP has 51. That means the TPP holds the balance of power with its eight votes.

The DPP held on to the presidency. It wasn’t a pretty victory, but it was a victory. Since the presidency is the most powerful office in the ROC political structure, DPP values and programs will continue to guide most government decisions for the next four years. However, this is yet another election in which the DPP hasn’t done very well. I don’t know what percentage they want in the legislative district races, but 40% in the presidential race and 36% in the party list section, well, it’s not outstanding. Then you think about their miserable performance in the 2022 and 2018 local elections and the 33% they got in the party list section in 2020, and that’s a lot of lousy results. Perhaps Tsai Ing-wen’s two smashing victories and the two accompanying district legislative elections were the exceptions, not the standard DPP vote. The KMT is not the only party that needs to do some soul searching.

So how is the government going to work in this new world?

Let’s start with the biggest question: Who will control the executive branch?

We need to review some constitutional rules. Taiwan is not a presidential system; rather it is a semi-presidential system. The premier, not the president, appoints cabinet ministers and chairs cabinet meetings. That is, the premier runs the executive branch and is directly responsible for the day-to-day operations of the government. That doesn’t mean the president is impotent. Since 1997, the president has the power to directly appoint the premier, and no vote of investiture from the legislature is necessary. As a result, the premier has usually been a close ally of the president with the responsibility of actually implementing the president’s political vision. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. The constitution also gives the legislature the right to pass a no confidence motion against the premier. If the no confidence vote passes, the premier must resign. However, if this happens, the president has the option to either appoint a new premier more acceptable to the legislature or dissolve the legislature and call for new elections.

During Taiwan’s first experience with divided government under president Chen (2000-2008), the legislature never exercised its right to vote no confidence even though all his premiers (except for the first, who lasted less than six months) were DPP stalwarts. These were not unity governments or grand coalitions. The majority KMT-PFP coalition never voted no confidence against the DPP premiers. This was the case even though Chen and the DPP became increasingly unpopular during his second term. During Chen’s first term, the majority coalition might have feared Chen would dissolve the legislature and they might lose their majority. By midway through his second term, Chen and the DPP were unpopular enough that this probably wasn’t much of a deterrent. The KMT-PFP might have decided that it was better to just wait until the end of his term and go into the presidential and legislative elections with a clear message rather than trying to gain control of the executive branch and risking being held partly responsible for the chaos. And it’s also possible that, even though the majority coalition parties weren’t worried as a group, individual legislators did not want to face the costs and risks of running another campaign. For district legislators, the costs of running an extra campaign were probably a bigger factor than the risk of losing. For list legislators, running for reelection might not be expensive, but there was no guarantee that they would be on the next party list. In the aftermath of the Chen presidency, it seemed pretty clear to most observers (including me) that the no confidence vote was an empty threat. If the legislature didn’t use it then, when would it use it? No matter the balance of power in the legislature, it seemed pretty clear that the president would dominate the executive branch.

I’ve been thinking about this for the past few weeks and wondering whether that conclusion was too strong. If president Lai (presumably elected with a very weak plurality) were faced with a single party KMT majority (which presumably would have gotten a much higher percentage of the vote in legislative elections then Lai did in the presidential elections), would the KMT demand a premier from their party and control of the executive branch rather than face a full four years out of power? Would they automatically vote no confidence for any DPP premier appointed by Lai and risk the possibility of new legislative elections? I’m not sure the KMT wouldn’t try. And I’m not sure president Lai wouldn’t capitulate in this scenario. It’s not unthinkable that we could end up with something like the French cohabitation scenario, with the president controlling international relations and national security and the legislative majority party in charge of almost all domestic policies.

However, the actual result, with the TPP holding the balance of power in the legislature, makes this very unlikely. The TPP should be terrified by any possibility of an early election. For one thing, they wouldn’t be running with Ko Wen-je on the ballot pulling votes in for the rest of the party. The legislative candidates would be on their own, and that might not work out so well. For another thing, they can’t do any better than they are right now. Right now, they hold the pivotal position in the legislature. If there were a new election, one of the other parties might end up with a single party majority, and that would make the TPP irrelevant. Finally, they should probably want to avoid going into an election too closely identified with one of the big parties. There are a lot of examples from Europe that when a coalition of a big party and a small party face an election, the small party usually gets slaughtered. In the cohabitation scenario, the KMT would enjoy most of the spoils of office, and the TPP could probably look forward to a disastrous next election.

So I think it’s highly likely that Lai will appoint a premier of his choosing, the KMT and TPP will complain that it’s a terrible choice, and they won’t do anything about it. Lai will probably control the executive branch.

OK, but will Lai be able to pursue his agenda?

The short answer is: somewhat. But I know you want a longer, nerdier answer.

The national budget is the single most important piece of legislation every year, and the rules empower the executive branch. The executive branch writes the budget, and the legislature cannot increase the budget for individual items or shift money from one item to another item. The only thing the legislature can do is cut the budget of individual items. It is politically difficult to slash the budget too much for one item. And of course, the executive strategically puts in money that can be cut so that the legislature can claim it was doing oversight when it passes 98% of the original budget request. The other thing that empowers the executive branch is that if the legislature does not pass the budget by the deadline, the previous year’s budget automatically goes into effect. The legislature cannot blackmail the executive with the nuclear option of shutting down the government by not passing a budget.

This means that all existing programs are basically protected. However, new programs or spending increases in an existing program are a different matter. The legislature must agree to fund those, and they might not do so.

The international community is particularly interested in the question of arms sales. Arms sales are usually funded with special budgets, and special budgets are, by definition, new spending. That means that the legislature does indeed have the power to hold up arms sales. In fact, this happened during the Chen presidency. However, the international context is different today than it was 20 years ago. The threat from China is more ominous and pressing. It might be harder to run the risk of being branded as soft on national security.

Other major projects funded with special budgets might be politically impossible. For example, the huge Forward-Looking Infrastructure project that Tsai passed over fierce KMT objections in 2017 would probably be dead on arrival in the new legislature.

OK, but can the legislature control Lai through its power to make new laws or amend existing laws?

If the legislature passes a law, the executive branch has to obey that. And the legislature can pass laws. It’s a messy process, and the minority party has plenty of opportunities to gum up the works, but a cohesive majority can eventually pass things that it wants to pass. The president only has a very weak veto that can be overridden by an absolute majority. This isn’t nothing. There was a case in the Chen presidency in which the vote to override a veto was 109 to 103, but since there were 225 members an absolute majority required 113 votes, so the veto held. However, in most cases the legislative majority will prevail, and the executive branch has to accept it.

The thing is, you can’t write a new law for every little decision. There just isn’t enough time on the legislative calendar. Most decisions are made in the executive branch by appointed officials. The legislature can win big battles, but it has to choose what its priorities will be. Overall, legislature will be much more successful trying to block new initiatives then in trying to reshape existing institutions.

Overall, Lai will be able to run the government, but he will not be able to pursue an ambitious new agenda unless the KMT and/or TPP agree to it. And if both those parties decide that they want to make his life hell in the hopes that he will be a one term president, these next four years might be rocky.