Election of the Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China 2001

← 1998Election to the
Legislative Yuan in 20012004 →

(Turnout 66.2%)

 %

40

30th

20th

10

0

33.4

28.6

18.6

7.8

2.6

9.1

DPP

KMT

Qinmin ^c

TSU ^d

Xindg

Otherwise.

Gains and losses

compared to 1998

 % p

 20th

 18th

 16

 14th

 12

 10

   8th

   6th

   4th

   2

   0

  -2

  -4

  -6

  -8th

-10

-12

-14

-16

-18

+3.8

-17.8

+18.6

+7.8

-4.5

-7.9

DPP

KMT

Qinmin ^c

TSU ^d

Xindg

Otherwise.

Remarks:

^c The Qinmindang was founded in 2000.

^d The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) was founded shortly before the July 2001 election.

On December 1, 2001 , the election of the Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China 2001 took place. It was the fourth election since direct election of Legislative Yuans , the legislative assembly in the Republic of China-Taiwan . It was also the first election since the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Chen Shui-bian surprisingly won the presidential election last year. In the end, the DPP made significant gains, but the parties in the so-called “ pan-blue camp ” retained a majority in the legislative yuan.

prehistory

In the presidential election last year, the Kuomintang (KMT) , which had previously dominated Taiwan politically, could not agree on a common candidate. The ambitious and popular former governor of Taiwan province James Soong was passed over in the candidate selection process and the rather colorless Lien Chan was chosen as the KMT candidate. Soong then ran his own candidacy and was expelled from the Kuomintang because of party-damaging behavior with his supporters. The votes from the Kuomintang camp were thus split between two candidates, Soong and Lien. The third candidate, Chen Shui-bian (DPP), profited from this dispute, winning the election with a relative majority of only 39.3% of the vote. This was the first time that a candidate was elected to the highest office of the state whose party was principally seeking complete independence for Taiwan while abandoning the goal of reunification with mainland China.

After the election, the defeated James Soong founded a new party, the Qinmindang , to achieve his political goals , which was programmatically very similar to the Kuomintang. After the lost election, indignant Kuomintang supporters demanded the resignation of party leader Lee Teng-hui , whom they accused of deliberately splitting the KMT by refusing Soong to stand for candidacy. As a motive, Lee was assumed that he had secretly wanted to favor the election victory of the DPP candidate. Lee was ousted from office and even expelled from the KMT in December 2000. His critics saw their suspicions confirmed when he later became the spiritual mentor of a new party, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), which programmatically advocated a radical independence policy for Taiwan and was therefore part of the “ pan-green camp ” with the DPP.

The main topic of the election campaign was the economy. In 2001, Taiwan fell into recession . In the first eight months of 2001, Taiwanese exports decreased by 16.7% compared to the previous year, gross national product and per capita income fell, and unemployment rose to 4.51%, the highest in 20 years. Economic experts saw the reasons for this primarily in developments in the world economy. The KMT, Qinmindang and Xindang attributed the negative economic development to the supposed economic incompetence of the government of Chen Shui-bien. The DPP argued that Taiwan had improved its position in terms of competitiveness in international rankings and was better off than most other countries despite the global economic crisis. Another campaign issue was the perennial theme of Taiwanese identity. While the “pan-green parties” emphasized Taiwan's independence, the “pan-blue parties” emphasized the bond with mainland Chinese culture. In contrast to the presidential election last year, the People's Republic of China barely interfered in the election campaign and barely reported on the election in the state media.

• Political Actors
• 

  Chen Shui-bian
  Acting President (DPP)

• 

  Frank Hsieh
  DPP chairman

• 

  Lien Chan
  KMT party chairman

• 

  James Soong
  Chairman of Qinmindang

• 

  Lee Teng-hui
  former KMT chairman and mentor at TSU

All parties took the upcoming election very seriously. The Kuomintang saw the election as an opportunity to regain political initiative after losing the presidential election last year and to further weaken Chen Shui-bien's presidency. The Qinmindang aspired to repeat the relative success of the previous year and to become the strongest party in the conservative camp before the Kuomintang. The DPP sought to strengthen its parliamentary base in order to break the opposition's policy of blocking President Chen. TSU and Xindang hoped for the greatest possible support for their political agenda.

Election mode and candidates

The voting mode corresponded to a mixture of proportional representation and personalized voting ( non-transferable individual votes ). Each voter had one vote. With this he elected a representative in the respective constituency and at the same time indirectly decided on the distribution of the party list mandates. Of the 225 MPs, 176 were elected in constituencies. The country was divided into 29 constituencies, 25 of which were multi-person constituencies, in which an average of 7 MPs were elected. In each of the remaining four constituencies (three islands or archipelagos and the sparsely populated Taitung district ) a member was elected. Of the 176 constituency mandates, 8 were reserved for the native people of Taiwan (4 each for the highlands and the lowlands). 41 MPs were filled via nationwide party lists and 8 more MPs were reserved for eligible voters abroad. A 5 percent threshold was applied to party lists and votes from overseas Taiwanese .

A total of 584 candidates competed for the 225 seats in parliament, of which 434 were in the constituencies, 21 for the indigenous MPs, 108 for the MPs elected via the national list and 21 for the MPs of the overseas Taiwanese.

Results

Overall result

15,550,197 people were entitled to vote, of which 10,311,453 (66.31%) took part in the election. 10,174,005 votes were valid and 137,448 (1.33%) were invalid. Of the 130,629 indigenous people of the lowlands who were eligible to vote, 53.6% took part and of the 141,757 of the highlands 61.8%.

Political party		be right		Mandates				Total seats
		number	in %	List	Foreign	Constituency	Native people-	number	%	+/-
	Kuomintang (中國 國民黨)	2,949,371	28.56	13	2	49	4th	68	35.1	−55
	Qinmindang ( 親民 黨 , English People First Party, PFP )	1,917,836	18.57	9	2	33	2	46	15.1	−12
	Xindang ( 新 黨 , English New Party, CNP )	269,620	2.61	0	0	1	0	1	0.4	−10
	Democratic Progressive Party (民主 進步 黨)	3,447,740	33.38	15th	3	69	0	87	39.6	+17
	Taiwan Solidarity Union ( 台灣 團結 聯盟 , English Taiwan Solidarity Union, TSU )	801.560	7.76	4th	1	8th	0	13	5.3	+13 (new)
	Other smaller parties	42,447	0.41	0	0	0	1	1	0.4	-8th
	Independent	899.054	8.71	0	0	1	8th	9	4.0	−3
total		10.174.005	100.0	41	8th	168	8th	225	100.0	-

1. ↑ Of the smaller parties, only Taiwan No.1 (TN1) won a mandate and 12,872 votes.
2. ↑ For the profits / losses of the smaller parties, all smaller parties are added together.

175 of the 225 elected MPs were men and 50 (22.2%) women. The average age of the elected MPs was 48.7 years.

Constituency cards

• 

  Strongest parties in the constituencies: Kuomintang DPP Qinmindang Xindang Other and Independent
  
  
  
  
  

• 

  Constituency results in hexagonal representation: Kuomintang DPP Qinmindang TSU Xindang Independent others
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

After the election

Composition of the newly elected legislative yuan:
Pan-green parties (100): TSU (13) DPP (87) Independent (10): Independent (9) Other (1) Pan-blue parties (115): Kuomintang (68 ) Qinmindang (46) Xindang (1)










The DPP gained significantly and became the strongest group in parliament for the first time. The KMT suffered drastic losses, losing almost half of its mandates and falling back to second place. In third place followed with a strong result the Qinmindang, which was founded by James Soong only last year, but failed to achieve its goal of surpassing the Kuomintang in terms of votes. The TSU, which was founded shortly before the election, also performed comparatively well. The decline of the Xindang, however, continued. Most of their constituents appeared to have defected to Qinmindang. Despite the DPP's relative gains in votes, the majority in the new Legislative Yuan remained precarious for President Chen. His party, the DPP, had 87 seats, the programmatically related TSU 13, so that up to an absolute majority of 113 votes, 13 votes were still missing. Here the DPP government was dependent on the 10 independents and individual defectors or deviants from the conservative camp. Immediately after the election, President Chen called on the opposition to cooperate with the government and offered to form a coalition government. However, this was rejected by the KMT.

Web links

• Central Electoral Commission of Taiwan (Chinese / English)

literature

• Christian Schafferer: The legislative Yuan election, Taiwan 2001 . In: Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies . tape 22 , no. 3 . Elsevier, September 2003, ISSN  0261-3794 , p. 503-559 , doi : 10.1016 / S0261-3794 (02) 00068-9 (English).

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Christian Schafferer: The 2001 National and Local Elections in Taiwan. (PDF) In: Taiwan Papers No. 4. Department of Political Science, National University of Taiwan and Ruhr University Bochum, Faculty of East Asian Studies, October 2002, accessed on November 2, 2016 (English). 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Wen-hui Tsai, George P. Chen: Building a Democratic State in Modernizing Taiwan: The 2001 Legislative Election and the Push for Pluralism. In: Hungdah Chiu (Ed.): Maryland Series in Contemporary Asian Studies . 2001 (English, digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu ).
3. ↑ Larry Diamond: How Democratic Is Taiwan? Five Key Challenges for Democratic Development and Consolidation. (PDF) Columbia University , accessed November 2, 2016 (contribution to the symposium The Transition from One-Party Rule: Taiwan's New Government and Cross-Straits Relations. April 6-7, 2001). 
4. ↑ ^{a b} 2001 Legislator Election. Central Election Commission Taiwan, accessed November 2, 2016 . 
5. ^ Christian Schafferer: The Power of the Ballot Box: Political Development and Election Campaigning in Taiwan . Lexington Books, 2003, ISBN 0-7391-0481-0 , pp. 70-72 (English).