Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, is doing worse and worse in opinion polls.
Seeing that the top two candidates have swapped places in the polls and that the gap between them is widening, Han’s fans suspect that survey results are being fabricated by the pollsters.
The reason is that during the preliminaries, Han rated very high in opinion polls, while President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) had low ratings.
Still, some of these polls were conducted by pan-blue media outlets, so the question is why they would falsify the results in Tsai’s favor.
Claims by Han’s fans are becoming more bizarre by the day. Although some can still think clearly and realize that his trailing in opinion polls means that something has to be done, others are posting online comments saying that if people do not turn off their mobile phones during Han’s rallies, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will detect their phone numbers and exclude them from opinion polls.
It sounds like magic, or as if the DPP has superpowers.
Han’s campaign team has been complaining constantly, saying that the low ratings translate into shrinking donations. “Donations” in Han’s context means donations by big businesses, rather than small donations from individual supporters.
Those in the business sector see political donations as an investment and hope that the political leadership will guarantee their profits. It is obvious that as momentum declines, business sector donations will dry up: No one likes a money-losing business, and companies would not support someone who is unlikely to be elected.
Han understands that if he cannot boost his support ratings, donations will stop flowing in.
As he is incapable of boosting support, he has decided to change tack: He is not even trying to improve his ratings. Instead, he has asked his supporters to say that they support Tsai when contacted by pollsters.
This trick has done nothing to change poll results, and the gap between the two continues to widen. The DPP is not alone in not understanding this tactic, Han’s fans are also at a loss.
The tactic is not designed to change the poll results, it is intended to bring chaos to the polls so that voters are unable to follow the changes in the presidential election campaign.
Han is no longer worried about Tsai, he is worried about People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜).
Many pan-blue supporters are afraid of supporting Soong, because their dislike for Tsai is so strong they have decided that they must focus on tactical voting and concentrate all their votes on the stronger pan-blue candidate.
If Han falls behind Soong in opinion polls, people could abandon him and focus their tactical voting efforts on Soong, causing Han’s campaign to collapse.
Tsai’s campaign team is calling on supporters to vote for her so that Han will not get enough votes to qualify for an election subsidy, and this is scaring him: Han is not trying to win the election, he is trying to save his money.
Chen Mao-hsiung, a retired National Sun Yat-sen University professor, is chairman of the Society for the Promotion of Taiwanese Security.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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