Description of Electoral System:

(courtesy of IFES election guide)

The President is elected by popular vote to serve a 4-year term. In the Legislative Yuan, 113 Members are elected through a parallel system. 73 seats are directly elected from constituencies using a plurality vote, 6 seats are reserved for the representation of indigenous people and 34 seats from a single constituency using a proportional system.

Electoral Systems Snapshot

(Courtesy of International IDEA)

*Click on links for definitions

WANT MORE ELECTION RELATED STATS FOR TAIWAN? Go to "election databases" on the left-hand menu of this page OR comparative data on the right-hand menu and choose your area of interest.

Most Recent Election

(courtesy of wikipedia)

The election for the 12th-term President and Vice-President of the Republic of China was held in the Republic of China (Taiwan) on Saturday, March 22, 2008. Kuomintang (KMT) nominee Ma Ying-Jeou won, with 58% of the vote, ending 8 years of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) rule.

This was the fourth direct election for the President of the Republic of China. The two candidates were DPP candidate Frank Hsieh and Kuomintang (KMT) nominee Ma Ying-Jeou. The KMT ticket was officially formed as of June 23, 2007, with Ma announcing his choice for running mate to be former premier Vincent Siew. The DPP ticket was announced in August, 2007, with Frank Hsieh selecting former Premier Su Tseng-Chang. Unlike the 2004 presidential election, the political rhetoric of the campaigns tended to focus on economic issues and government corruption rather than national identity and the political status of Taiwan, with both candidates endorsing the status quo in the short term. But much like previous elections, this election was also marked with island-wide mass rallies and much political mudslinging.

The KMT ticket received the largest percentage and number of votes in the history of Taiwan. The election occurred as incumbent President Chen Shui-Bian's popularity remained at record lows following mass rallies in September 2006 urging him to resign amid implications of corruption. Amid general economic malaise, as unemployment had risen under Chen's presidency and Taiwan's overall GDP was surpassed by that of South Korea, Ma won on a platform of economic revitalization and a promise to improve cross-straits relations, in contrast to Chen's confrontational style, as "a peacemaker not a troublemaker". The election occurred in the wake of the KMT's landslide victory in the 2008 legislative elections in which the Pan-Blue Coalition won a three-quarters majority in the Legislative Yuan. On the same day two referenda on joining the United Nations, the first supported by the DPP of President Chen and the second supported by the KMT, failed due to low turnout. Prior to the vote, the KMT had encouraged its supporters to boycott the DPP referendum, and expressed its "understanding" if supporters boycotted both.

Previous Elections

(courtesy of wikipedia)

An election for the National Assembly took place in Taiwan on Saturday 2005-05-14 and elected an ad hoc National Assembly whose only function was to serve as a constitutional convention in order to approve or reject amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of China already proposed by the Legislative Yuan. The results indicated that the amendments would be approved, as the parties supporting them won an overwhelming majority, and indeed the amendments were passed on June 7, 2005. The election was carried out using purely the party-list proportional representation system. Notably, this election saw the temporary breakdown of the traditional two-coalition system in Taiwanese politics: instead of dividing into the Pan-Green Coalition and Pan-Blue Coalition over the political status of Taiwan, the parties divided themselves into larger and smaller parties, with the larger Democratic Progressive Party and Kuomintang in support of the amendments and the smaller People First Party and Taiwan Solidarity Union against them.