Taiwan’s voters have elected the nation’s first female president – the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Tsai Ing-wen in a landslide election. Tsai picked up about 56% of the vote, sending a defiant message to ruling Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Eric Chu, who took just 31% of the vote.
People First Party candidate James Soong trailed in a distant third, with less than 13% of the vote.
Saturday’s election results did not come as a surprise, with pundits and opinion polls long suggesting that Tsai had a good chance of winning.
The vote is widely being seen as a referendum on the past eight years of KMT rule, and the policies of President Ma Ying-jeou, which have seen Taiwan grow closer in ties with Mainland China.
So far it appears that the DPP is also set to take a majority of seats in the legislature for the first time in history. At least two parties in addition to the DPP and KMT are likely to receive legislator-at-large positions, which are allotted to parties that garner more than 5% of the party vote. One of those parties is James Soong’s PFP. The other is the New Power Party (NPP), which grew out of last year’s youth-driven Sunflower protests that took over the legislature. The NPP also has strong DPP leanings.