The opposition Democratic Progressive Party made history as the nation elected its candidate Tsai Ing-wen as Taiwan’s first female president. Saturday’s election also gave the DPP the majority in the legislature for the first time in history.
Tsai’s election will be the third transition of political party power in Taiwan’s democratic history. Tsai won with 56% of the votes, a landslide victory over ruling Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Eric Chu who only took 31% of the vote. People First Party candidate James Soong came in a distant third with 13% of the vote.
The DPP also won a majority in the legislature taking 68 of 113 legislative seats. The KMT only won 35, a big drop from its former majority of 64 seats.
The newly formed New Power Party (NPP) also saw great success as all three of its candidates were elected. It also won 7% of the party votes which gave it 2 additional seats. The NPP was formed out of the Sunflower Student movement and now holds 5 seats, the third most seats of any party in the legislature.
The voter turnout rate for Saturday’s presidential election was only 66 percent, which is the lowest ever since Taiwan began directly electing its president in 1996. The previous low was 74% in 2012.