Legislative Yuan results
2012 marked the first time ever that the elections for Legislative Yuan were held at the same time as those for president. In this year’s elections, for the 8th legislative term, there were 113 seats up for grabs. The KMT saw its total seats in the legislature fall from 81 to 64, but this figure still gives it a solid majority in the chamber. The DPP increased its total from 27 to 40 seats. The Taiwan Solidarity Union and the People First Party also won three seats each and independents took three.
Legislators in Taiwan are elected in three ways. Most seats in the Legislative Yuan (73) are for candidates elected to represent a specific geographical district. In these races, as in the presidential race, the KMT and the DPP dominate the two sides of the political spectrum. But 34 “supplementary” legislators are elected by a proportional “party ballot,” in which voters also cast a separate ballot for a political party, not any particular individual candidate, and the percentages are tabulated at the national level. Finally, six seats are reserved for Aboriginal constituencies. It was the party ballot results that most surprised observers in 2012.
In the last legislative elections back in January of 2008, it appeared that the Taiwan Solidarity Union and People First Party were on the verge of evaporating. But these two parties—whose aim is to play the role of “critical minority” in the legislature—both surpassed the 5% minimum threshold to get party seats in 2012. The TSU took three such seats, and the PFP two (plus one Aboriginal seat).
In particular, the TSU got 8.96% of the party vote, an exceptionally strong performance. One of the main reasons was certainly the emotional appeal made the night before the election by Lee Teng-hui, former ROC president and the spiritual leader of the TSU. Though his appeal for his supporters to back Tsai Ing-wen in the presidential voting probably did little to add to her total, the effect on the TSU party vote was probably critical.
Before the voting, many people urged People First Party presidential candidate James Soong to withdraw from the contest, as support for the PFP overlaps that of the KMT and it was thought that he might draw votes away from Ma Ying-jeou. But he insisted on staying in the race, hoping to attract party votes for the PFP even if he had no realistic chance of winning the presidency. The strategy seemed to work, with many people “split voting,” and although Soong got less than 3% of the vote for president, the PFP received 5.49% of the party vote, squeaking over the threshold and successfully returning to the legislature.
Fig. 3: Seats in the Legislative Yuan by party, 2008 vs. 2012/source: Central Election Commission