In the final month leading up to Taiwan’s 2024 presidential election, the Kuomintang began a noticeable shift away from a campaign on policy such as housing prices, employment, and wage rates. Instead, the KMT focused steadily on the fringe of Taiwanese politics. This included commentary from former President Ma Ying-jeou questioning the authenticity of Tsai Ing-wen’s Ph.D. (LSE has released a letter confirming its authenticity). To compound matters, presidential candidate Hou You-yi promised to investigate the appropriation of funding within the Ministry of Defense’s indigenous submarine program (a crucial and so-far successful aspect of the MoD’s plan for Taiwanese defence measures). Other political tirades from the Kuomintang included accusing DPP presidential candidate William Lai of having an illegally constructed childhood home. While true, it was an attack focusing on the fact that Lai grew up as the ‘son of a miner’ outside the political elite. The attack promptly turned around, spawning a few days of headlines focusing on Hou You-yi’s investment in constructing university dormitories for tax write-offs or the fact Taiwan People’s Party presidential candidate – and former Mayor of Taipei, Ko Wen-je – had purchased farmland in Taichung only to turn that farmland into an illegally constructed for-profit parking lot.

Ultimately, none of these non-substantive campaign antics resulted in significant shifts within the polling. In the last poll before the election, the DPP ticket of Lai and Vice-Presidential candidate Hsiao Bi-khim (former top diplomat to the United States) remained steadily ahead of Hou You-yi and Ko Wen-je but never broke the forty-percent marker. For foreign observers, Lai and the DPP’s inability to ever break over forty percent represented the possibility that ‘third-party’ candidate Ko Wen-je could break through. Foreign media interviews consistently highlighted residents of Taipei and New Taipei who wanted a break from the ‘Blue-green’ politics (KMT-DPP, respectively). Media outlets picked up on resentment against the DPP’s failure to improve three critical issues: 1) failure to increase the average salary, 2) failure to deflate property prices, and 3) failure to incentivize an increase in the birth rate through social or economic programs. While these do not encapsulate the whole of Taiwanese’ issues with the DPP and Tsai Ing-wen’s second administration, they represented core frustrations that led to the KMT winning most of the local elections during the 2022 by-election.  

Yet, by 8 p.m. on election night, the results represented a decisive victory for the Lai campaign: 40.05% (5,586,109 votes) for the Lai-Hsiao DPP ticket; 33.49% (4,671,021 votes) for the Hou and Jaw Shaw-kong (a popular TV host) KMT ticket; 26.46% (3,690,466 votes) for the Ko and Cynthia Wu (former executive of Shin Kong Life Insurance Group and legislator) TPP ticket.

The legislative election – which in Taiwan has 73 first-past-the-post seats, six indigenous single non-transferable vote seats, and 34 party-list proportional representation seats – represented another story for the DPP at large. The Kuomintang won 52 seats (plus two independent legislators who lean blue), the DPP 51 seats, and the TPP 8 seats. Although the DPP won the party-list proportional representative voting by a slim margin (36.1556% DPP, 34.5822% KMT, 22.0686% TPP), it was within these results that voters directed the most ire towards stagnant DPP policy. The legislative composure also represents the president-elect (he will take office in May) Lai’s biggest challenge.

The dichotomy between the strong DPP Lai-Hsiao victory and the split-legislator represents the core of opinion towards governing policy in Taiwan. The KMT, whose presidential candidate displayed profound boredom on the campaign trail and former president dove into the conspiratorial, won not on a promised policy for the future but the legacy of former president Ma’s policy past.

Meanwhile, the policy that Ko Wen-je’s campaign promised rewarded him a heavily male, vocal, and northern-based populous. Ko remained deeply unpopular among females and performed worse in most southern counties (although he did surprisingly well in the eastern rural county of Hualien). Moreover, all eight seats the TPP won came from the 3,040,334 votes won in the party-list proportional representative seats. For that, the TPP will play a kingmaker between policymakers on the DPP and KMT sides. Ko Wen-je’s influence will remain negligible outside of the media, and it remains to be seen if his TPP party can post substantive candidates in the subsequent 2026 local by-election. His form of populism speaks to a specifically male, urban-based populist that does not translate to Taiwan’s industrial or agricultural hear, or most people beyond 30.

The KMT’s success in legislative district elections relies on promises of policy that promise a return to focus on business, depending on a significantly older, more nationalist base. Part of the KMT’s policy base is a policy return that concentrates on ‘connecting across the strait’ to increase business activity with the People’s Republic of China. Falling in with the PRC and Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda, the KMT puts fault on the DPP (often referring to Lai as a separatist) for the resulting decline in economic activity. Simultaneously, the KMT campaign promised that if given a mandate through the presidency and legislator, they could have rejuvenated cross-strait trade and improved Taiwan’s economic outlook.

Such policy transitions away from the KMT of 2018-2020, under Chairman Johnny Chiang, who attempted to create a younger populism that focused domestically on Taiwan. Instead, the KMT’s policies look more like the cross-strait trade agreement from 2014 under President Ma Ying-jeou, which resulted in the Sunflower Movement protests. The return of Ma to a prominent spotlight is indicative of a KMT that is struggling for imaginative policy involving measures beyond ‘ROC imagery nationalism’ and ‘the DPP are separatists’ rhetoric.

Establishing KMT legislator Han Kuo-yu (known as the ‘Taiwanese Trump’) as the president of the legislator for the next four years is further indicative that both the KMT and TPP, whose votes were needed to elect him to that position, might be deeply committed to a form of populism that is both unimaginative and does not go beyond ‘we are not the green DPP.’ Heading into the new legislative season, the substantive policy beyond the antics of the past three months remains the DPP and president-elect Lai’s most prominent challenge.

Taiwan faces continued aggression from CCP psychological warfare, dwindling support from Asia-Pacific and Latin-American nations due to CCP coercion, challenges in shaping domestic and scalable economies, the need for more academic prowess in the sciences within the top universities, challenging the electric vehicle and rechargeable battery market, shaping AI internationally, becoming a recognized member of the World Health Organization, and reviving a military plagued by logistical challenges. That list mentions only the most notable challenges, each which have existential implications. Just as this time, four years ago, Tsai’s beginning to her second tenure as president faced an unprecedented pandemic, the Lai administration will have sudden challenges.

Now is not a time for trite campaign-level antics between the KMT, TPP, and DPP. The one significant advantage the DPP has heading into the next two years is that if the TPP wants to become a party with any staying power, it will have to cooperate on passing a certain amount of substance through the legislature. Populism only lasts so long, and the individual legislators will begin to craft an image that goes beyond parroting Ko Wen-je’s urbanite formula. The TPP has no base in any one county yet, and it will need to form one to survive within county-level politics.

Lai and Hsiao have a profoundly professional political presence, which will go far in shaping the next four years of DPP legislation and negotiating through a split legislature. The election is hardly a mandate for any one party. The results, however, display that democracy and substance matter, providing an opportunity for substantial steps forward on the regional and international stage in the coming four years.