Ko May Become Double Loser Under Strategic Voting？Past Election Data Shed Light
United Daily News, December 10, 2023
News trends have changed greatly since the registration of presidential candidates and the formal formation of a three-way race. In the past two weeks, Kuomintang (KMT) presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih, who had been mostly ranked third in opinion polls, rose to second place after the collapse of the cooperation between the KMT and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and his choice of Mr. Jaw Shaw-kong as his running mate. The Hou-Jaw ticket’s support follows closely behind that of the frontrunners William Lai and Bi-khim Hsiao of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and is within the margin of error. The TPP’s Ko Wen-je and Wu Hsin-ying ticket fell to the third place and many polls showed that their support has fallen below 20 percent. Mr. Ko, who originally planned to transcend KMT and DPP, may become a double loser under strategic voting. It is not surprising judging from past electoral experiences.
In the past week, there were eight opinion polls by five different organizations, half of which came from Formosa E-Newsletter. The common trend of the eight polls showed that the Lai-Hsiao ticket occupied first place, the Hou-Jaw ticket second, and the Ko-Wu ticket third. As to support rate, the Lai-Hsiao ticket had 37.8 percent to 40.1 percent, the Hou-Jaw ticket 28.0 percent to 33.8 percent, while the Ko-Wu ticket was 14.8 percent to 26 percent. Apart from the poll by CNEWS, which is more friendly to Mr. Ko, showing the Ko-Wu ticket had 26 percent, all other polls showed that their support rate was below 20 percent.
After Candidates Register, Opinion Poll Differences Emerge
After the formal registration of presidential candidates, the trend shows that while Mr. Ko’s support is slipping, both Mr. Hou’s and Mr. Lai’s support is increasing. This phenomenon is different from the past analyses that if voters do not vote for Mr. Ko, their votes would be transferred to Mr. Hou.
This result is not surprising, however. It is fair to say that the increase of Hou-Jaw’s support is not because of the dropping of Mr. Ko’s support, and Mr. Hou does not gain more benefit than Mr. Lai. The surge in support for the Hou-Jaw ticket may come from the transfer of supporters due to independent candidate Terry Gou’s withdrawal from the race.
In the past, Mr. Hou’s biggest weakness was the lack of support from diehard KMT supporters; they had placed their hope on Mr. Kou. Before withdrawing from the race, Mr. Kou’s support was about 4.2 percent to 9.4 percent. After the KMT placed former presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu as the first on the legislator-at-large candidates’ list and picked Mr. Jaw, who has the fundamentalist KMT character, as Mr. Hou’s running mate, the fundamentalist KMT supporters returned and prompted support for the Hou-Jaw ticket.
It is widely known that the majority of Mr. Ko’s supporters are young people; most of them had supported the DPP in the past. After disliking the DPP has become the mainstream trend, the young generation chose Mr. Ko. With the dropping of Mr. Ko’s support, the young people probably returned to the Lai-Hsiao ticket and boosted its poll numbers.
The return of DPP supporters is the other reason why the Lai-Hsiao ticket’s support has climbed. Although Mr. Lai was nominated by the DPP, his lack of charisma and opposition towards President Tsai Ing-wen in the past led to his limited power in consolidating the DPP’s fundamental supporters. But when Ms. Hsiao became the vice-presidential candidate, this measure reinforced the strength of the cyber army of the DPP to support Mr. Lai and unified the party. Mr. Lai’s 40 percent support is very close to the rate of support of DPP fundamentalists.
Two Factors Contribute to Ko’s Poll Rebound
From the long-term opinion polls by the Formosa E-Newsletter, Mr. Ko’s support is like riding a rollercoaster. The poll numbers fell from 17.51 percent to 14.8 percent, then rebounded to 19.73 percent. Mr. Ko’s supporters may be excited by the trend and the reasons are worthy of examining.
First, because of the closing gap in poll numbers between the KMT and DPP camps, this has become a traditional KMT-DPP battle, where they attack each other fiercely. For example, KMT attacked Ms. Hsiao’s performance as Taiwan’s representative to the United States and Mr. Lai’s possession of an unlawfully built house in New Taipei and tax evasion. The DPP attacked the KMT’s lack of cooperation in the Legislative Yuan and KMT Legislator Ma Wen-chun’s housing controversy. The ugly fight between the KMT and DPP has returned and Mr. Ko has benefited from it.
On the other hand, Mr. Ko seemed to have changed his strategy. In the past, Mr. Ko talked about the rotation of ruling parties or even cooperation between the TPP and KMT, but recently he said he is actually of fundamentalist DPP nature. His close aide Ms. Huang Shan-shan also attacked KMT ruthlessly. Mr. Ko’s move obviously attempts to win votes from the DPP. According to the polls by Formosa E-Newsletter, the Lai-Hsiao ticket’s support has decreased by 2.3 percent while the Ko-Wu ticket has gained 2.5 percent, the two numbers are almost the same, discounting statistical margin of error.
Third-Party Candidates Overestimated in Past Elections
The trend of the campaign can be judged from opinion polls of past presidential elections. Except for the year 2000 presidential election when KMT was number three, three-way elections happened in 2012 and 2016, and the number three holders were all third-party candidates: Mr. James Soong and Mr. Ruey-shiung Lin in 2012 and Mr. James Soong and Ms. Hsu Hsin-ying in 2016.
In the 2012 presidential election, the last public opinion poll results showed the KMT’s support as 37.1 percent to 44 percent and the DPP’s 33.1 percent to 36.5 percent. In the actual voting, the KMT ticket won 51.6 percent and DPP’s ticket 45.63 percent. The numbers of opinion polls were all lower than those of the actual voting. The Soong-Lin ticket’s opinion poll numbers were 5.8 percent to 7.2 percent, but they only got 2.7 percent of the actual votes.
A similar situation happened in 2016. In the last eight public opinion polls, DPP’s support was 38.4 percent to 45.2 percent and the KMT’s rate was 16.3 percent to 25 percent. In the actual voting, the DPP obtained 56.12 percent, and the KMT received 31.04 percent, they were higher than the poll numbers. The Soong-Hsu ticket’s polls ranged from 13.6 percent to 16.1 percent, but the actual vote was 12.83 percent, the only one lower than the polling numbers.
It can be observed that in a three-way race, the poll number of the number three team was usually overestimated, and the situation is more so if the poll number was low. This is the effect of strategic voting, that is, the third-place ticket was deserted by voters.
Ko’s Main Task: Not Be Deserted by Complete Strategic Voting
Under this situation, the Ko-Wu ticket’s main task is not seeking reversal but making sure that they will not be completely deserted by voters. If their poll numbers continued to drop, that would be very close to the situation of the Soong-Hsu ticket in 2016; not to mention that in 2016, many fundamentalist KMT supporters voted for the Soong-Hsu ticket because they were dissatisfied with the KMT’s change of presidential candidate in the last minute. Now that Han Kuo-yu has returned to supporting Mr. Hou, it would be very difficult for Mr. Ko to obtain votes from Mr. Han’s supporters, and he may even lose the traditional KMT votes. If young voters returned to the DPP and voters who yearn for rotation of ruling parties returned to the KMT, then Mr. Ko may be deserted twice.
But the Hou campaign should not count their chickens before they hatch. The trend of the polls is consistent: The Lai-Hsiao ticket ranks first, and the Hou-Jaw ticket second. Their support figures have become fixed. In other words, unless there are tremendous changes, a significant change in voting blocs is not in Mr. Hou’s favor.