Polls reveal unexpected shifts in geographic trends

Ma of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) officially announced victory in pouring rain, yesterday evening, after garnering 6,891,139 votes (51.6 percent) beating the opposing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Tsai Ing-wen, who garnered 6,093,578 votes (45.63 percent). Ma previously won by a much bigger margin of 2,221,000 votes in 2008, when the DPP was at one of its lowest points in history, amid the corruption scandal of former President Chen Shui-bian.

KMT Loses Yilan, Wins Hualien

The 2012 election results indicated that the historical trend of the KMT winning in northern Taiwan and losing in most of southern Taiwan has not changed. The people of Yilan County, however, re-evaluated Ma's performance over the latter half of his first presidential term.

The election turnout yesterday revealed that the DPP has broken through in Yilan County. That the KMT would lose the northeast region came as a minor surprise, having received 130,951 votes (51.42 percent) against the DPP's 123,700 (48.58 percent) in the 2008 presidential election, the KMT lost with 115,496 (44.89 percent) votes to the DPP's 135,156 (52.53 percent) this year. The Yilan people's change in attitude could be attributed to its switch in KMT governance to a DPP administration in the 2009 county magistrate election.

In People First Party presidential candidate James Soong's stronghold Hualien County, Magistrate Fu Kun-chi's (傅崑萁) call for all pan-blue supporters to vote for Ma may have led to the incredible turnout: the KMT overpowered the DPP by over 70,000 votes, winning with 118,815 votes (70.30 percent) over the DPP's 43,845 votes (25.94 percent).

Risky New Taipei and Taichung

While the political topography did not see a great shift between Ma's first two years of presidency, the DPP's gains in New Taipei City and Taichung during the 2010 elections were alarming for the KMT, and the ruling party will need to remain vigilant in the two locations, as revealed by this year's election results.

New Taipei City was widely considered as the most competitive and critical region in this year's election, as the support the KMT received had dropped significantly from 2008's 1,359,129 votes (61.05 percent) to 1,115,536 (52.61 percent) in 2010, while that of the DPP increased from 867,205 votes (38.95 percent) to 1,004,900 (47.39 percent). If the people of New Taipei City had been slightly more dissatisfied about the Ma administration, the DPP would have claimed its first northern Taiwan victory in a presidential election.

Ma still defeated Tsai with 1,245,673 votes (53.73 percent) against 1,007,551 (43.46 percent), yesterday, with the KMT receiving an extra 1 percent of support from 2010 levels.

In Taichung in 2008, the KMT had a comfortable win of 871,677 votes (60.29 percent) of the overall votes against the DPP's 580,457 (39.71 percent). In 2010, to the surprise of many political spectators, DPP mayoral candidate Su Jia-chyuan was only defeated by a slim margin by Mayor Jason Hu, who had then already served two terms as Taichung mayor: Support for the KMT reduced to 730,284 votes (51.12 percent), and that for the DPP rose to 698,358 (48.88 percent).

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