Four hours into the counting of votes in Saturday’s (Jan. 11) presidential elections, incumbent Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) had received more than 6 million votes, or almost 2 million more than Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), according to media reports.
Tsai, running for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) with ex-Premier William Lai (賴清德) as her vice-presidential running mate, had received 6,014,371 votes, according to cable station TVBS.
Han, with ex-Premier Simon Chang (張善政) on the ticket, remained in a distant second place, with 3,903,348 votes. The only areas where he was leading were the counties of Miaoli, Hsinchu, Hualien, Taitung, Kinmen and Lienchiang, according to CNA.
The third candidate on the ballot, People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), with his running mate, former advertising executive Sandra Yu (余湘), had received 437,813 votes, TVBS reported.
The president was reportedly planning to hold an international news conference at 8 p.m. Meanwhile, at the various election campaign headquarters, candidates and party leaders were preparing to arrive and to address supporters and journalists, reports said.
KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) had tendered his resignation to take responsibility for the main opposition party’s disappointing performance, according to TVBS.
Taiwan has 19,311,105 eligible voters. The turnout fell gradually from more than 80 percent in 2000 to about 66 percent in 2016.
Of eligible voters, the largest group, 3.3 million, live in New Taipei City. The next biggest group is 2.29 million in Kaohsiung City, where Han has served as mayor for just over a year.
In 2016, Tsai won 56.12 percent with 6.89 million votes, KMT candidate Eric Liluan Chu (朱立倫) 31.04 percent and 3.8 million votes, and Soong 12.83 percent with 1.5 million.
Voters also went to the polls to select 113 members of the Legislative Yuan, including 34 from at-large lists presented by political parties and voted in according to proportional representation.
According to data from the Central Election Commission, four parties were still likely to be represented in the at-large segment, the DPP, the KMT, Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je’s Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and the New Power Party (NPP). Soong’s PFP was unlikely to reach the threshold of 5 percent.
Source：Taiwan News
