Taiwan's Elections and Party Politics

30-second overview: In the 1950s, "democratic showcase" elections allowed voters to choose legislators but not a president. By 1996, 14.31 million people cast ballots in the first direct presidential election ever held in a Chinese-speaking society.¹ In less than half a century, Taiwan passed through three peaceful transfers of power (2000, 2008, 2016), transforming elections from a decorative fixture of martial-law politics into a national ritual held every four years. From the flames of the Zhongli Incident to the three-way contest of 2024, this island's democracy was not engineered — it was earned, one ballot at a time.

November 19, 1977. Polling Station No. 213, Zhongli City, Taoyuan County. A poll monitor was witnessed using an ink-stained thumb to spoil ballots. When word spread, more than ten thousand citizens surrounded the Zhongli Police Station. By nightfall, fire had consumed the station's building. Two people died: National Central University student Chiang Wen-kuo was shot in the head; 19-year-old Chang Chih-ping fell in the street.²

That fire did not simply burn a building. It burned a signal into the national consciousness: Taiwanese voters would no longer tolerate having their ballots stolen. In that election, tangwai (outside-the-party) candidate Hsu Hsin-liang won by 230,000 votes over the KMT's Ou Hsien-yu.³ The Zhongli Incident became the first spark of Taiwan's democratic movement. Ballots could be stolen, but public will could not.

The Evolution of a Single Vote

Democratic Showcase (1950s)

In the 1950s, the Nationalist government needed to convince the United States that it represented "Free China." Local elections were that "showcase" — allowing the form of democracy while the KMT maintained firm control over the substance. The 1950 Taiwan Provincial Assembly election was the first postwar popular election, but the rules were clear: you could elect legislators, not the provincial governor; you could criticize policy, but not the leader.⁴

Even under tight control, elections opened cracks. In 1951, Wu San-lian won the Taipei mayorship as an independent candidate with a 65.6% vote share, becoming the first democratically elected capital city mayor in the history of the Republic of China.⁵ The KMT quietly backed him behind the scenes, but the mere fact of a non-KMT mayor standing at Taipei City Hall showed other native politicians what was possible.

War on the Ballot (1970s)

In the 1970s, Taiwan was struck by successive shocks: expulsion from the United Nations (1971) and the break in diplomatic relations with the United States (1979). The KMT's legitimacy began to erode. As a middle class grew, tangwai voices began surfacing in elections.

In 1975, 67-year-old Yilan politician Kuo Yu-hsin ran for a Legislative Yuan seat. When the count was announced, nearly 100,000 spoiled ballots appeared in Yilan County alone — many times the normal proportion. Afterward, a bag of discarded valid ballots was unearthed during road construction, all marked for Kuo Yu-hsin. The lawyers who fought the resulting election lawsuit were Yao Chia-wen and Lin Yi-hsiung — both of whom, four years later, would stand among the defendants in the Formosa Incident.⁶

Kuo Yu-hsin's votes were stolen. But that lawsuit taught an entire generation of tangwai activists: the law can be a weapon.

From Underground to the Grand Hotel (1980s)

The Formosa Incident (1979) devastated the tangwai movement, but also cultivated its next generation. The defense lawyers for the arrested leaders — Chen Shui-bian, Hsieh Chang-ting, Su Tseng-chang — became the new faces of the democratic movement. The families of those arrested — Lu Hsiu-lien, Chen Chu, Chou Ching-yu — entered politics and became the female force of the Formosa generation.

On September 28, 1986, 132 tangwai figures meeting on the second floor of Taipei's Grand Hotel announced the founding of the Democratic Progressive Party. This violated the Law on Civil Organizations in the Period of National Mobilization — forming a party was illegal. When the news reached Chiang Ching-kuo, his aides advised a crackdown. Chiang said: "Times are changing, the tide is changing, and so is our environment."⁷

Ten days later, Chiang told Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham that Taiwan would lift martial law and open politics. The DPP's founding was not suppressed — the KMT chose tolerance.

Two months later, in the Legislative Yuan election, the DPP captured 22.2% of the vote and won 12 seats. A party born just sixty days earlier had already found its footing.⁸

Electing Our Own President

Full Legislative Reform (1991–1992)

In 1991, the "Eternal Parliament" that had persisted for forty-three years was finally replaced through complete new elections. The old legislators and National Assembly members elected on the mainland in 1947, who had never faced reelection, stepped down. In 1992, the Legislative Yuan held full new elections — the first time Taiwan's people truly elected their own legislature.⁹

1996: Missiles and Ballots

On March 23, 1996, 14.31 million voters entered polling stations to cast ballots in the first direct presidential election in Taiwan — and in any Chinese-speaking society.

The PRC fired missiles toward the seas off Taiwan in the days before the election, intending to intimidate voters. The effect was the opposite: turnout surged to 76%. Lee Teng-hui won 5.81 million votes (54%), Peng Ming-min 2.27 million (21.1%), Lin Yang-kang 1.60 million (14.9%), and Chen Lu-an 1.07 million (10%).¹ Not one voter was frightened away.

2000: Three-Way Race and the First Transfer of Power

The 2000 presidential election was the most dramatic night in Taiwanese political history. The KMT fractured as former Taiwan Province Governor James Soong left the party to run independently, splitting the pan-blue vote with the KMT's nominated candidate Lien Chan.

Final count: Chen Shui-bian 4.97 million votes (39.3%), James Soong 4.66 million (36.8%), Lien Chan 2.92 million (23.1%). The DPP won power with less than 40% of the vote.¹⁰

What mattered was not who won, but how the losers responded. The KMT lost 55 years of power, and no army moved, no coup materialized. Lien Chan and James Soong conceded defeat. Power transferred peacefully. Taiwan proved for the first time that its democracy was not merely theoretical.

2004: Two Bullets

On March 19, 2004, the day before the election, Chen Shui-bian and Lu Hsiu-lien were shot during a campaign motorcade in Tainan. One bullet grazed Chen's abdomen; another struck the kneecap protector on Lu's knee. Both were hospitalized and released the same day.¹¹

The following day, Chen won by fewer than 30,000 votes over Lien Chan. Pan-blue supporters gathered in front of the Presidential Office to protest, alleging the shooting was staged. The prime suspect, Chen Yi-hsiung, was found drowned in Tainan's Anping Harbor ten days later. The truth remains disputed to this day.

This was the moment Taiwan's democracy came closest to fracturing. The election result was questioned by nearly half the electorate, and street protests persisted for weeks. But ultimately, legal procedure completed its work: recount, lawsuit, court ruling. The institutions held.

The Fragmentation of the Party Map

Taiwan's party history is not as simple as a "two-party system." It is a history of constant splitting, reorganization, death, and rebirth.

Internal fault lines within the KMT erupted in the 1990s. In 1993, the New KMT Alliance, dissatisfied with Lee Teng-hui's "nativist" direction, broke away to form the New Party. In 2000, James Soong after his defeat established the People First Party. In 2001, after Lee Teng-hui was expelled from the KMT, he backed the founding of the Taiwan Solidarity Union.¹²

On the DPP side, there were also fractures. In 2015, the energy of the Sunflower Movement crystallized into the New Power Party, which advocated a more radical Taiwan-centric line than the DPP. In 2019, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je struck out on his own to found the Taiwan People's Party, attempting a "beyond blue and green" third path.¹³

By 2024, Taiwan's party landscape had largely settled into three major forces: the DPP (green), the KMT (blue), and the TPP (white). But history tells us this map could crack open again at any moment.

How Taiwanese People Hold Elections

Campaign Rallies: Democracy as Carnival

The most distinctive spectacle of Taiwanese elections is the night rally (zàoshì wǎnhuì). Candidates rent a plaza, set up a stage, entertainers perform as warm-up acts, crowds wave flags and shout "tòng suàn! tòng suàn!" — a Taiwanese-language pun meaning "let it count" that sounds like "be elected."

Rallies are not merely political mobilization — they are community festivals. Vendors line the streets, children ride on their fathers' shoulders, elderly residents haul stools to claim spots early. Elections are one of the few occasions when Taiwanese people can simultaneously satisfy the needs of political participation, socializing, and entertainment.

Returning Home to Vote: The Annual Migration

Taiwan still has no absentee voting system. Voters must cast their ballots in person at their registered household address — no mail-in voting, no early voting.¹⁴

This means that on every election day, Taiwan witnesses a large-scale "return-home voting" migration. Kaohsiung residents working in Taipei, Yunlin residents commuting to Hsinchu — all scramble for train tickets to go home to vote. The High Speed Rail adds extra trips; bus companies dispatch additional vehicles. On election day, Taiwan's high-speed rail stations are more crowded than Chinese New Year.

Those who oppose absentee voting worry: if the more than one million Taiwanese working in China could vote remotely, they might be subject to Beijing's influence. Supporters argue that requiring people to vote at their registered address rather than where they live is effectively a voting barrier. This debate remains unresolved.

Election Night

Taiwan's vote-counting is a national live broadcast. After polling closes at 4:00 p.m., election workers open ballot boxes on site and announce each vote individually. Television stations set up cameras at every polling station and relay the count in real time.

No other country's vote count is more transparent than Taiwan's. You can stand outside a polling station and watch every ballot displayed, called out, and tallied. From the time polls close to the moment results are largely settled usually takes only three to four hours.

Recent Turning Points

2018: The Han Wave and the Referendum Tsunami

The 2018 local elections were a political earthquake. The KMT's Han Kuo-yu, an outsider figure who had parachuted into Kaohsiung, defeated the DPP's Chen Chi-mai by 890,000 votes, ending two decades of green governance in Kaohsiung.¹⁵ Across the island, the KMT won 15 county and city executives; the DPP was left with 6. Tsai Ing-wen resigned as party chair.

The simultaneous citizen referendums were even more stunning. Ten referendum questions covered energy policy, food safety, same-sex marriage, and gender equity education — voters faced ten separate referendum ballots, and lines stretched around the block. The referendum defining marriage as between one man and one woman passed, creating a direct collision between popular opinion and the law on the road to Taiwan becoming the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.¹⁶

2020: 8.17 Million Votes

Two years later, the wind had completely shifted. Hong Kong's anti-extradition law movement made Taiwan's fears about "one country, two systems" concrete and visceral. Tsai Ing-wen mounted a comeback from the 2018 debacle, winning 8,170,186 votes — the highest vote total ever recorded by any candidate in Taiwanese electoral history. Han Kuo-yu received 5.52 million; turnout reached 74.9%.¹⁷

The number 8.17 later became a political symbol, embraced by supporters as an expression of democratic will and cited by critics as evidence of polarized politics.

2024: The Three-Way Contest Redux

The 2024 presidential election reprised the three-way format of 2000. Lai Ching-te (DPP) won with 5.58 million votes (40%), Hou You-yi (KMT) received 4.67 million (33.5%), and Ko Wen-je (TPP) took 3.69 million (26.5%).¹⁸

This was the first time in the history of direct presidential elections that the winner had been elected with less than 50% of the vote, and the first time a party had won three consecutive presidential elections. At the same time, the DPP lost its legislative majority — executive and legislative power now belonged to different camps, and Taiwan entered a new era of divided government.

A Democracy Still Evolving

In 2005, the National Assembly voted to dissolve itself — the body elected on the mainland in 1947 completed its final task in Taiwan and passed into history. The same constitutional revision cut the Legislative Yuan from 225 to 113 seats, extended terms from three to four years, and converted the electoral system to a single-member district, two-vote format. Future constitutional amendments must clear a public referendum hurdle so high as to be nearly impossible to surmount.¹⁹

Taiwan's electoral system continues to evolve. A 2022 referendum proposal to lower the voting age from 20 to 18 — requiring the approval of more than 9.61 million voters as a constitutional amendment — ultimately received only 5.64 million yes votes and failed to pass. Vote buying, disinformation, and electoral reform remain unfinished business.

From the flames of the 1977 Zhongli Incident to 14 million people queuing quietly to vote in 2024 — in less than half a century, Taiwan transformed elections from a right that required fire to protect into a habit that runs itself without anyone needing to be reminded.

Not every election is perfect. But every time, the losers have left and the winners have taken office. On this earth, that is not as obvious as it sounds.

Further reading

• Taiwan's Democratic Transition — The full arc of forty years of transformation from martial law to its lifting
• The Formosa Incident — The night in 1979 that changed Taiwan's fate
• The Martial Law Era — How thirty-eight years of martial law shaped Taiwanese society

References