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Development of Democratic Politics after 2008 11
2005 Magistrates and mayors 50.96% 41.95%
2006 Mayor of Taipei City 53.81% 40.89%
2006 Mayor of Kaohsiung City 49.27% 49.41%
2008 Legislators 53.48%/51.23% 38.65%/36.91%
2008 President 58.45% 41.55%
Remarks: The “single constituency and two-vote system” was applied for the 2008 legislative elections. The first
figure denotes the regional rate while the second figure refers to the vote-winning rate for legislators at
large and nationals living abroad.
Sources: the databank website of Central Election Commission. http://210.69.23.140/cec/cechead.asp; information of
elections for public servants, Election Research Center, National Chengchi University.
http://vote.nccu.edu.tw/cec/vote4.asp
The above table is produced by the author.
One factor contributing to the change emerged in
2005 in an amendment to the Constitution. It mandates
the “single constituency/two-vote system” for parliamentary
elections. In the legislative elections of 2008,
voters were required to cast two ballots, one for a candidate
and the other for a political party, to elect 74
“regional” lawmakers, one from each single constituency,
and 39 others at large from among nominees of
political parties according to proportional representation.
The Democratic Progressive Party received 39
percent of the votes cast, a record high, but was able to
win 18 percent of the seats, the share it had in 1986
when it was inaugurated.
The 2008 legislative and presidential elections
have set four trends in Taiwan’s political development.
They are bipartisan competition, a majority government
as the key issue in that competition, political moderation,
and a leaning toward the presidential system of
government.
1. Bipartisan Competition
All minority parties were shut out of the Legislative
Yuan in 2008. Only two major parties remain.
The new legislative election system tends to eliminate
small political parties. The Kuomintang and the Democratic
Progressive Party will compete against each
other to win a parliamentary majority in the foreseeable
future. The bipartisan competition also precludes possibilities
of party alliance and coalition government.
2. Majority Government as the Key Issue
The Democratic Progressive Party could never
control a majority in the Legislative Yuan. Its government
was a minority one, lacking full support of the
parliament. A minority government is prone to political
instability. In the past, most voters in Taiwan supported
one party in the presidential elections but the other in
the legislative elections so that checks and balances
might be in place against the administration. While the
Democratic Progressive Party was in power, its minority
government was crippled by crisis after political
crisis.
Discontented voters who elected a Kuomintang-controlled
legislature opted for a majority government
to make Ma Ying-jeou president. (The votes
Ma received were five percent more than the party won
in the legislative elections.) A majority government is
conducive to political stability as well as Taiwan’s
economic development. In the future, the two parties
need to make majority government the key issue in
competition for power.
3. Political Moderation
Before the new election system was introduced,
legislators had been elected by “single-nontransferable
votes” from multiple constituencies. Radical candidates,
those diehard Taiwan independence activists and
equally deeply ingrained Chinese unification advocates,
had chances to win seats in the Legislative Yuan. The