On Assignment At The Elections
Ma Ying-jeou and his winning team giving the victory speech after the 2012 Taiwan elections. Ma easily won by a margin of 6% or 800 000 votes over challenger Tsai Ing-wen. Taipei, Taiwan January 14 2012.
January 14 2012 saw elections take place in Taiwan for both the presidency and the legislature. In the weeks and months leading up to the vote, support for the two main presidential candidates was fairly even. Incumbent Ma Ying-jeou of the ruling KM, widely credited with helping to cross-strait tensions with China during his first term, appeared weak on the economic front with a widening gap between the rich and the poor and what for Taiwan was considered high unemployment (4.3% as of October 2011). Challenger Tsai Ing-wen of the opposition DPP was seen as a definite chance to win the election. She rebuilt the DPP after their worse performance in 2008, and wasn’t seen as being as anti-China as the party has traditionally been known for. A third challenger, James Soong of the PFP was never a serious contender.
After all the votes were counted in an election with a turnout of 74%, Ma took victory with 51% of the vote, a winning margin of 6% or 800 000 votes. This margin was a lot larger than even the KMT had predicted in their polling, giving Ma a mandate to continue his reforms and policies over the next 4 years. Tsai, with 45% of the vote, immediately resigned as chair of the DPP. Soong’s performance saw him receive less than 3%.
I was assigned to cover the elections and had the opportunity to go behind the scenes. As well as being a great opportunity with greater access, it was quite simply, extremely interesting. Sitting in the Central Election Commission tally room and watching the official count come in that was very different than what the TV was showing. I’d always assumed that the media got their figures from the main tally room but this wasn’t actually the case. It appears that a lot of their predictions were based on exit polls, conjecture and reports from individual voting booths.
