Signs of Change? An Analysis of Taiwan's December 2009 Local Elections
Under special circumstances created by a government decision to partly merge and upgrade six counties and county-level cities to special municipality status, local elections took place on December 5, 2009 in areas covering less than half of Taiwan's population. The results are generally seen as an important, though small, victory for the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The ruling Kuomintang (KMT) (Guomindang), however, has remained in a stable position, while the DPP still has a long way to go towards a comeback.
Faction versus Ideology: Mobilization Strategies in Taiwan's Elections
On 2 December 1989, voters on Taiwan cast ballots to elect national legislators (lifaweiyuan), provincial and city representatives (sheng/shiyiyuari) and county executives (xianzhang). Though the Nationalist Party (KMT) received 59 per cent of the overall vote, the election was widely viewed as a surprising success for the fledgling opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), since the KMT had polled over 70 per cent of the vote in all previous elections. James Soong, Secretary-General of the KMT, announced after an emergency meeting of the shocked KMT leadership, “We calmly accept an upset.”
Taiwan's Politics: The Provincial Assemblyman's World
maps that need to be corrected. For example, the map index mentions "Double East and West P'ai-lou" (why not "Tung/Hsi P'ai-lou?"), whereas only the west p'ai-lou is indicated on the map. The distance from Hsi-chih men to Yen Ching (it should be Yen-ching University) is shown as "two miles," and to Hai Tien as "four miles." Since Yenching (currently Peking University) is, if anything, further, than Hai Tien, these figures are mistaken.