Abstract
This paper examines the evolution of the political goals of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) from its founding in 1986 to 2026, and tests an institutional scenario that has not yet occurred: if the CCP regime on the mainland were to end and the mainland were to establish competitive democracy, could the DPP expand its organization into the mainland and take part in elections there — in what legal form, and under what conditions? The paper distinguishes four categories of evidence: formal party documents (the party platform, national congress resolutions, and the party charter); the constitution and laws of the state; official statements by the President of the Republic of China (Taiwan); and the election statistics of the Central Election Commission. A comparison of the texts shows that, in the party’s own interpretation, the 1991 Basic Platform, the 1999 Resolution on Taiwan’s Future, and the 2007 Normal Country Resolution stand in a relationship of coexistence and extension, not of mutual repeal; the statements of the government during its periods in power, however, operate within the framework of the Constitution of the Republic of China and the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area. The election data (the abstract lists only the three elections of 2016–2024; the complete 2012–2024 series appears in Table 3 of Chapter Two, and the discrepancy in the sources of the 2012 data has been closed — see item 4 of the Data Errata Note) show that the DPP’s nationwide party-list vote for the Legislative Yuan was 5,370,953 votes (44.0598%) in 2016, 4,811,241 votes (33.9774%) in 2020, and 4,982,062 votes (36.1629%) in 2024, with party-list seats of 18, 13, and 13 in the three successive terms. These data can only describe the behavior of voters in the Republic of China (Taiwan) in specific elections; they cannot be used to derive the future preferences of mainland voters. The legal analysis shows that, under Article 4 of the current Political Parties Act, a party’s organizational territory is limited to the free area of the Republic of China; organizing a party across the strait is therefore in the first instance a question of the law of association, election law, and constitutional arrangements, not a question of population size. This paper accordingly offers only conditional models and falsifiable indicators, and makes no electoral predictions.
Keywords: Democratic Progressive Party; Republic of China (Taiwan); party platform; Resolution on Taiwan’s Future; Political Parties Act; cross-strait relations; democratic transition; proportional representation
Research Note
This paper is a research reconstruction: the complete original text of the original five-chapter paper could not be found, and this draft has been rewritten on the basis of verifiable public sources; it is not a verbatim restoration of the original text. The evidence in the text is divided into four grades — Grade A: official original texts and official databases; Grade B: secondary publications of official institutions; Grade C: academic monographs and peer-reviewed research; Grade D: news reports and other secondary compilations (for the grading criteria see “Research Questions, Materials, and Evidence Grading” below). Facts, interpretations, and conjectures are written separately, and matters that cannot be verified are expressly indicated both in the body of the text and in the “Research Limitations.”
Research Questions, Materials, and Evidence Grading
This paper answers four questions. RQ1: What changes occurred between 1986 and 2026 in the DPP’s formal propositions on national positioning and independence? RQ2: What is the relationship, in the party’s internal norms, among the 1991 Basic Platform, the 1999 Resolution on Taiwan’s Future, the 2007 Normal Country Resolution, and the 2019 Resolution on Social Solidarity and Generational Win-Win? RQ3: On the hypothesis of a democratic transition on the mainland, what legal prerequisites would the DPP’s cross-regional organization have to satisfy? RQ4: What can the existing election data show, and what can they not show?
The materials are divided into four grades. Grade A: official original texts or official databases, including the DPP’s official collected Platform PDF and Charter PDF, the current texts of statutes in the National Laws and Regulations Database, the Central Election Commission’s election database (db.cec.gov.tw), and the full texts of speeches released by the Presidential Office. Grade B: reprints by official institutions or secondary official publications, such as the Election Records compiled and printed by local election commissions, and the statistical tables and polling-trend charts produced by the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University from Central Election Commission data. Grade C: academic monographs (including monographs from university presses and academic publishers) and peer-reviewed research. Grade D: news reports, encyclopedias, and other secondary compilations, usable only as leads and never as a basis for conclusions. Quotations in the text retain the original Traditional Chinese, and their source codes are indicated (see the References).
Methodologically, this paper employs documentary comparison, descriptive election chronology, a matrix of legal conditions, and scenario models with expressly stated assumptions. Facts, interpretations, and conjectures are written separately; wherever a statement is conjectural, its premises and the conditions under which it could be overturned are noted. The correspondence between the five hypotheses tested in Chapter Five and the research questions is as follows: H1 corresponds to RQ1 and RQ2 (goal evolution and its associated factors); H2 and H4 correspond to RQ3 (the legal prerequisites of cross-regional organization and representation); H3 corresponds to RQ4 (the limits of extrapolating from existing election data); and H5 is a normative proposition serving the institutional-design discussion of RQ3. The basis for the judgment on each hypothesis is given in Section 1 of Chapter Five.
Chapter One — The Evolution of the Democratic Progressive Party’s Political Goals, 1986–2026
1. 1986–1990: An Anti-Authoritarian Party and “Freedom to Advocate Taiwan Independence”
The DPP was proclaimed founded by tangwai (non-party) figures at the Grand Hotel on September 28, 1986, and its first National Congress adopted the party charter and platform on November 10 of the same year [DPP-HIST] [DPP-PLAT]. At the time of its founding martial law was in its final phase, and early mobilization concentrated on democratic-reform issues: lifting martial law and the ban on parties, full re-election of the parliament, and direct presidential elections. On November 10, 1987, the National Congress resolved that “the people have the freedom to advocate Taiwan independence”; on April 17, 1988, the National Congress adopted the “Four Ifs” resolution, which held that if the Kuomintang and the Communists negotiated a unilateral settlement, if the Kuomintang sold out the interests of the people of Taiwan, if the CCP unified Taiwan, or if the Kuomintang did not implement genuine democratic constitutional government, then the DPP would advocate Taiwan independence [DPP-HIST]. These two resolutions show that the party’s early formal position treated independence as an issue of freedom of speech and as a conditional proposition, not as an unconditional program of state-building. The personal positions of party members were more diverse still, and the consensus of 1986 as a whole cannot be retroactively inferred from the later platform.
2. 1991: The Basic Platform Adds the “Republic of Taiwan” and the Plebiscite Clause
The officially collected Platform records that on October 12–13, 1991, the Fifth National Congress, First Session, “amended the Basic Platform to add ‘establish a sovereign and independent Republic of Taiwan’” [DPP-PLAT, p. 15]. That clause advocates “state-building for an independent Taiwan on the basis of the existing reality of Taiwan’s sovereignty, and the drafting of a new constitution,” and redefines the sovereign domain of the state; it also provides: “The proposition of establishing a sovereign and independent Republic of Taiwan and drafting a new constitution shall be submitted to all the residents of Taiwan to be chosen and decided by plebiscite” [DPP-PLAT, p. 16]. The 1991 clause thus contains both a substantive goal (a Republic of Taiwan, a new constitution) and a procedural constraint (a plebiscite of the residents). It should be noted that the party history chronicle lists this amendment under “06/23” of 1991, which is inconsistent with the dates October 12–13 given in the Platform PDF; this paper adopts the meeting dates in the Platform PDF and registers the conflict of dates as an item pending verification (see the Research Limitations in Chapter Five).
3. 1999: From a State-Building Proposition to the Formulation “The Status Quo Is Independence”
On May 8–9, 1999, the Eighth National Congress, Second Session, adopted the Resolution on Taiwan’s Future [DPP-PLAT, pp. 31–33]. Article 1 of the Resolution states: “Taiwan is a sovereign and independent state; any change to the independent status quo must be decided by all the residents of Taiwan by plebiscite.” The explanatory part states: “Taiwan, although it is called the Republic of China under the present constitution, is not subordinate to the People’s Republic of China,” and defines the sovereign domain as Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu and their appurtenant islands [DPP-PLAT, p. 32]. Compared with the 1991 clause, the center of gravity of the 1999 text shifted from “establishing a new state” to “confirming the existing independent status and protecting the status quo by plebiscite,” while at the same time accepting the factual description “called the Republic of China under the present constitution.” The Resolution also advocates that the two sides of the strait build a framework of peace through all-round dialogue. This shift took place before the 2000 presidential election, and research on the DPP’s party change connects the adjustment on the national-identity issue to electoral competition [Rigger 2001; Fell 2005]; but an electoral motive is an interpretation, not a fact carried in the text itself.
4. 2001–2004: Resolutions Enter the Platform, and Acceptance of a “Republic of China Identity”
The party history chronicle records that on October 20, 2001, the Ninth National Congress, Second Session, adopted an amendment to the party charter: “resolutions adopted by the National Congress on major national policies shall be deemed the platform of this party,” by which the Resolution on Taiwan’s Future became part of the party platform [DPP-HIST]. The text of the final paragraph of Article 14 of the party charter (in the version amended on September 28, 2019, on which this draft relies) reads: “Resolutions and campaign platforms adopted by the National Party Congress on major national policies shall be deemed part of the platform of this party” [DPP-CHARTER, p. 7]. This means that, at the level of the party’s internal norms, the 1991 Basic Platform and the 1999 Resolution are both “the party platform,” and the latter did not delete the former. On September 26, 2004, an extraordinary National Congress adopted the Resolution on Ethnic Diversity and National Unity, point 6 of which states: “Since the sovereignty of the Republic of China belongs to all the people of Taiwan and not to any other regime, Taiwanese identity and Republic of China identity are both ways of expressing national identity” [DPP-PLAT, p. 42]. This was the first time a formal DPP document accepted a “Republic of China identity” in positive language.
5. 2007: The Normal Country Resolution
On September 30, 2007, the Twelfth National Congress, Second Session, adopted the Normal Country Resolution [DPP-PLAT, pp. 45–46; DPP-P3]. The text states that “Taiwan is a sovereign and independent state, not subordinate to and not governed by China,” and expressly states that it is put forward “on the basis of the ‘Taiwan independence platform’ and the ‘Resolution on Taiwan’s Future’”; its specific propositions include applying, in the name of “Taiwan,” for membership in the United Nations and other international organizations, “completing the rectification of Taiwan’s name at an early date, enacting a new constitution, and holding a plebiscite at an appropriate time,” and promoting transitional justice and local education. The party’s official question-and-answer document of the same year describes the three documents as standing in a relationship of extension and supplementation [DPP-P2]. The 2007 Resolution was adopted at the end of the Chen Shui-bian administration, before the 2008 legislative and presidential elections; in the seventh Legislative Yuan election of January 12, 2008, the DPP won only 27 of the 113 seats (13 regional seats, 14 party-list seats, 0 indigenous seats) [CEC-L-2008]; and it lost the presidential election of March that year [DPP-HIST, the party history’s own account; this draft has not separately verified the Central Election Commission’s presidential-election data].
6. 2008–2015: Documents and Issues during the Period in Opposition
During the period in opposition from 2008 to 2015, the collected Platform on which this draft relies contains only one National Congress resolution: the Resolution on the Socioeconomy of Taiwan’s New Generation of September 24, 2011, whose theme is social and economic; in August of the same year the party also published its “Ten-Year Political Platform” [DPP-PLAT; DPP-HIST]. These two documents alone are insufficient to conclude that the party’s overall center of gravity had shifted. In the 2012 presidential election, Tsai Ing-wen and Su Jia-chyuan received 6,093,578 votes (45.63%), losing to Ma Ying-jeou and Wu Den-yih’s 6,891,139 votes (51.60%) [CEC-P-2012]. In the legislative election of the same year, the DPP won 40 of the 113 seats [CEC-L-2012]. During the Sunflower Movement of 2014, the DPP supported the demand to “first legislate an oversight act for cross-strait agreements, then review the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement” [DPP-HIST, the party history’s own account of an external event; this draft has not corroborated it from other sources]. No new National Congress resolution on national positioning appeared in this phase, and the party’s external statements rested mainly on “maintaining the status quo” and procedural oversight; whether this constitutes a change of line is disputed both in academia and within the party, and this paper reaches no conclusion on it.
7. 2016–2026: Official Statements under the Constraints of Government
From 2016 the DPP has governed continuously. In her inaugural address of May 20, 2016, Tsai Ing-wen stated that the new government “will conduct cross-strait affairs in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of China, the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, and other relevant laws” [PRES-2016]. On September 28, 2019, the National Congress adopted the Resolution on Social Solidarity and Generational Win-Win, which expressly states that the party “abides by the [Resolution on Taiwan’s Future] adopted by this party in 1999,” and reaffirms that the future of Taiwan belongs to the right of self-determination of all its residents [DPP-PLAT, p. 51; DPP-2019]. The National Day address of 2021 put forward the “Four Persistences,” including “persisting in the proposition that the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other” [PRES-2021]. In his inaugural address of May 20, 2024, Lai Ching-te, President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), stated: “Under the Constitution of the Republic of China, the sovereignty of the Republic of China belongs to all its citizens; those who hold the nationality of the Republic of China are nationals of the Republic of China; from this it can be seen that the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other,” and stated that “the Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), or Taiwan” are all names of the country [PRES-2024].
These are official statements of the organs of the state, and belong to a different level of evidence from the party’s resolutions: the former are constrained by the constitution and the laws and take all citizens as their object; the latter are the party’s internal political norms. Between the two there is evident continuity (“not subordinate to each other,” “the residents decide the future”), and also difference (presidential addresses argue on the basis of the Constitution of the Republic of China, and the formulations “Republic of Taiwan” and “drafting a new constitution” do not appear).
Table 1: Formal DPP Documents on National Positioning (compiled for research purposes)
| Document | Date of adoption and adopting body | Core proposition | This paper’s reading | Evidence grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Platform “Republic of Taiwan” clause | 1991-10-12/13, Fifth National Congress, First Session | Independent state-building, drafting a new constitution, decision by plebiscite | A substantive goal with a plebiscitary procedure attached | A [DPP-PLAT] |
| Resolution on Taiwan’s Future | 1999-05-08/09, Eighth National Congress, Second Session | Taiwan is already a sovereign and independent state, called the Republic of China under the constitution; changes to the status quo require a plebiscite | The center of gravity shifted to confirming the status quo | A |
| Charter amendment (resolutions deemed the platform) | 2001-10-20, Ninth National Congress, Second Session | Resolutions on major policies are deemed the party platform | Established the relationship of coexistence | A (the text of the current charter; the chronicle, as to the party’s own resolutions, is likewise a firsthand record) |
| Resolution on Ethnic Diversity and National Unity | 2004-09-26, extraordinary National Congress | Taiwanese identity and Republic of China identity mutually accepted | Acceptance of a Republic of China identity | A |
| Normal Country Resolution | 2007-09-30, Twelfth National Congress, Second Session | Name rectification, constitution-making, UN admission, a plebiscite at an appropriate time | An extension on the basis of the preceding two | A |
| Resolution on Social Solidarity and Generational Win-Win | 2019-09-28, Eighteenth National Congress, Second Session | Abiding by the 1999 Resolution, residents’ self-determination, democratic security | Reaffirmation of the 1999 Resolution | A (as of the October 2019 PDF relied on; later resolutions not verified) |
| Presidential inaugural and National Day addresses | 2016, 2021, 2024, Presidential Office | Handling cross-strait affairs under the constitution and the Cross-Strait Act; mutual non-subordination | Statements of the organs of the state, not party resolutions | A [PRES] |
Chapter Two — The Independence Goal, the Constitutional Order of the Republic of China, and the DPP’s Actual Political Behavior
1. Four Normative Levels
In discussing “whether the DPP pursues independence,” at least four levels must be distinguished: (1) the party platform and National Congress resolutions, which bind party members and the party’s political direction; (2) campaign promises and governing policies; (3) the Constitution of the Republic of China, its Additional Articles, and the laws, which bind the organs of the state; and (4) the democratic mandate formed by elections. A political party cannot, by its platform, change the state’s territory, name, or electorate. Under Article 4, paragraph 5 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China, a change of territory must be proposed by one-quarter of all the members of the Legislative Yuan, resolved by three-quarters of the members present at a meeting attended by three-quarters of all members, and, after public announcement for half a year, submitted to a referendum of the electors of the free area of the Republic of China, taking effect only if the valid affirmative votes exceed one-half of the total electorate; Article 12 sets the same threshold for constitutional amendment [LAW-ADDL]. In the 2024 Legislative Yuan of 113 seats, the DPP holds 51 seats [CEC-L-2024]. Calculated separately for the three stages: (1) a proposal requires one-quarter of all legislators, i.e., at least 29 seats, which the DPP’s 51 seats already exceed; (2) a resolution requires the attendance of three-quarters (at least 85 members) and the agreement of three-quarters of the members present (at the minimum attendance of 85, at least 64 members; at full attendance, at least 85), which the DPP alone is far from reaching; (3) the referendum requires valid affirmative votes exceeding one-half of the total electorate, which depends on the whole electorate and not on Legislative Yuan seats. In other words, the DPP can by itself propose a constitutional amendment or a change of territory, but cannot by itself complete the Legislative Yuan resolution, still less substitute a party’s strength for the referendum. Even if the constitution-making proposition in the party platform is regarded as a goal, the existing constitutional order makes it impossible for a single party to accomplish it.
The word “independence” must also be disaggregated: declaring a new state de jure; maintaining de facto autonomy under the existing constitutional order of the Republic of China; changing the name of the state; drafting a new constitution; and obtaining foreign recognition are five different propositions. The DPP’s formal documents since 1999 mainly support the second proposition, while retaining the third and fourth as long-term propositions in the party platform; Presidential Office statements employ only the second proposition. Confusing these propositions with one another is the most common misreading in public discussion.
2. Governing Behavior and the Constitutional Framework
The observable behavior of the DPP in power includes: after 2016, taking “the Constitution of the Republic of China and the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area” as the legal basis for handling cross-strait affairs [PRES-2016]; using “the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other” as the core external formulation in presidential addresses [PRES-2021; PRES-2024]; and proposing no constitutional amendment to change the name of the state or draft a new constitution. On the other hand, neither the 1991 clause nor the 2007 Resolution in the party platform has been repealed by a National Congress, and the 2019 Resolution still expressly abides by the 1999 Resolution. Three interpretations of this exist: (a) the “strategic shelving thesis,” which holds that the independence goal remains but is deferred because of the constitutional threshold and international pressure; (b) the “substantive transformation thesis,” which holds that after 1999 the party accepted the independence of the status quo carried by the constitutional order of the Republic of China, and that the 1991 clause is mainly symbolic; and (c) the “layered coexistence thesis,” which holds that the party’s internal identity politics and state governance belong to different arenas, and that the two sets of language coexist over the long term. The existing documentary evidence most directly supports (c): Article 14 of the party charter makes each resolution part of the party platform, while the texts of government operate separately under the constitution. Theses (a) and (b) would each require the party’s internal decision-making archives and long-term behavioral data to be tested, and this paper makes no adjudication between them.
3. Election Data: Three Kinds of Votes, Three Tables
All of the following data are taken from the nationwide statistics of the Central Election Commission’s election database (Grade A); this draft read its public data interface directly on October 18, 2026, and checked the figures item by item: the sum of the party-by-party nationwide party-list votes for each term exactly equals the official “valid votes” (18 parties in 2016, 19 parties in 2020, 16 parties in 2024; for 2012, the sum of the database’s party-by-party figures likewise equals the valid votes of 13,162,072, and agrees vote for vote with the “List of Election Results” in the Central Election Commission’s Election Record of the 8th Legislative Yuan Election; the differing figures of roughly 100 votes carried in the Tainan City Election Commission’s Election Record have been traced to their source and do not affect this table — see item 4 of the Data Errata Note), and the party-list seats total 34 in each term; the regional, indigenous, and party-list members elected total 113 seats in each term [CEC-L-2016; CEC-L-2020; CEC-L-2024]. Presidential votes, party-list party votes, and total chamber seats are three different variables; they are shown in separate tables and must not be added together or substituted for one another.
Table 2: Presidential Elections of the Republic of China (Taiwan): Votes of DPP-Nominated Tickets
| Year | DPP ticket | Votes | Share of valid votes | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | Tsai Ing-wen / Su Jia-chyuan | 6,093,578 | 45.63% | Lost (Ma Ying-jeou / Wu Den-yih 6,891,139, 51.60%) | CEC-P-2012 |
| 2016 | Tsai Ing-wen / Chen Chien-jen | 6,894,744 | 56.12% | Elected | CEC-P-2016 |
| 2020 | Tsai Ing-wen / Lai Ching-te | 8,170,231 | 57.13% | Elected | CEC-P-2020 |
| 2024 | Lai Ching-te / Hsiao Bi-khim | 5,586,019 | 40.05% | Elected (Hou Yu-ih / Jaw Shaw-kong 4,671,021, 33.49%; Ko Wen-je / Wu Hsin-ying 3,690,466, 26.46%) | CEC-P-2024 |
Table 3: Nationwide Party-List Votes for the Legislative Yuan (Stage One = Share of All Valid Party Votes; Stage Two = Distribution Ratio among Parties Passing the 5% Threshold)
| Year | All valid party votes | DPP votes | Stage One | Stage Two | DPP seats | KMT votes / seats | Third-party votes / seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 (8th term) | 13,162,072 | 4,556,424 | 34.6178% | 36.9822% | 13 | 5,863,279 / 16 | TSU 1,178,797 / 3 (People First Party 722,089 / 2) |
| 2016 (9th term) | 12,190,139 | 5,370,953 | 44.0598% | 52.7026% | 18 | 3,280,949 / 11 | People First Party 794,838 / 3 (New Power Party 744,315 / 2) |
| 2020 (10th term) | 14,160,138 | 4,811,241 | 33.9774% | 39.3665% | 13 | 4,723,504 / 13 | Taiwan People’s Party 1,588,806 / 5 (New Power Party 1,098,100 / 3) |
| 2024 (11th term) | 13,776,736 | 4,982,062 | 36.1629% | 38.9612% | 13 | 4,764,576 / 13 | Taiwan People’s Party 3,040,615 / 8 |
Note: The Taiwan People’s Party’s Stage One figure for 2024 was 22.0706% and its Stage Two figure 23.7785%; the KMT’s Stage One figure was 34.5842% and its Stage Two figure 37.2604%. Totals for the parties passing the threshold: in 2016, four parties with 10,191,055 votes (83.6008%); in 2020, four parties with 12,221,651 votes (86.3103%); in 2024, three parties with 12,787,253 votes (92.8177%). The 2012 figures follow the “List of Election Results” in the Central Election Commission’s Election Record of the 8th Legislative Yuan Election; the roughly 100-vote discrepancy in the “calculation table” reproduced in a local election commission’s Election Record has been closed — see item 4 of the Data Errata Note.
Table 4: Structure of the 113 Seats of the Legislative Yuan (73 Regional + 6 Indigenous + 34 Party-List)
| Year | DPP | KMT | Third parties and others | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 40 | 64 | People First Party 3, TSU 3, Non-Partisan Solidarity Union 2, independent 1 | CEC-L-2012 |
| 2016 | 68 | 35 | New Power Party 5, People First Party 3, Non-Partisan Solidarity Union 1, independent 1 | CEC-L-2016 |
| 2020 | 61 | 38 | Taiwan People’s Party 5, New Power Party 3, Taiwan Statebuilding Party 1, independents 5 | CEC-L-2020 |
| 2024 | 51 | 52 | Taiwan People’s Party 8, independents 2 | CEC-L-2024 |
4. The Interpretive Limits of the Election Data
Comparison in the same caliber shows: from 2016 to 2020 the DPP’s party-list party vote fell by 559,712 votes, its Stage One vote share fell by 10.0824 percentage points, and its party-list seats fell by 5; from 2020 to 2024 it rose by 170,821 votes, its vote share rose by 2.1855 percentage points, and its seats were unchanged; from 2016 to 2024 it fell by 388,891 votes in total. Over the same periods, the KMT’s party vote rose by 1,442,555 votes from 2016 to 2020 and by 41,072 votes from 2020 to 2024. The gap between presidential votes and party votes is still more noteworthy: the DPP presidential ticket’s votes minus the same party’s party-list votes were 1,523,791 votes in 2016, 3,358,990 votes in 2020, and 603,957 votes in 2024. The enormous gap of 2020 shows that support in a candidate election is far greater than support for that party’s list, and the two cannot be interchanged.
These arithmetic differences do not identify causes. Between 2016 and 2024 the combinations of parties standing for election (the appearance and the rise and fall of the New Power Party and the Taiwan People’s Party), turnout (party-list turnout was 66.25% in 2016, 74.86% in 2020, and 71.78% in 2024 — that is, the number of party-list ballots in the Central Election Commission database divided by the total number of party-list electors: 12,447,036 / 18,786,940; 14,456,293 / 19,312,105; 14,044,052 / 19,566,007 [CEC-L-2016; CEC-L-2020; CEC-L-2024]; if the number of electors in the presidential election of the same day, 19,311,105, were used as the denominator for 2020, the change in turnout would be less than 0.01 percentage points — see Research Limitation (7)), the total size of the electorate, and the issue environment were all changing. More importantly, no election was a single-issue vote on independence or unification. The rise and fall of the party vote therefore cannot prove the degree of voters’ approval of the 1991 clause or the 2007 Resolution, still less be extrapolated into the preferences of mainland voters.
5. Supplementary Evidence on the Structure of Public Opinion
The 1994–2026 trend survey of “unification–independence positions” of the Election Study Center, National Chengchi University (Grade B, figures read from the chart) shows that in the merged sample of January–June 2026, “maintain the status quo forever” accounted for 34.4%, “maintain the status quo and decide later” for 25.5%, “lean toward independence” for 21.7%, “lean toward unification” for about 6.3% (an estimate: the chart labels overlap at that point, and its precision is lower than that of the other items), “independence as soon as possible” for 4.5%, “unification as soon as possible” for 1.3%, and no response for 6.4% [ESC-TONDU]; the items sum to 100.1%, the difference coming from rounding and chart-reading error. The two items advocating changing the status quo as soon as possible sum to about 5.8%. This distribution is consistent with the official language of “maintaining the status quo” and “mutual non-subordination” that has predominated since the DPP took power; but consistency is only a relation of compatibility, and cannot indicate the size of the role of the 1991 clause in electoral mobilization. Polls, however, are measurements of attitudes and cannot substitute for evidence of the party’s internal decisions; the chart figures were obtained by reading the chart, and before formal citation the Excel data should be requested from the Center for verification.
Chapter Three — The Legal Prerequisites of Cross-Strait Party Organization after a Democratic Transition on the Mainland
1. Definition of the Question
What this paper calls a “democratic transition on the mainland” is a hypothesis: the CCP regime on the mainland ends, and the mainland establishes a constitutional order founded on free elections, multiparty competition, judicial independence, and freedom of association. This hypothesis presupposes neither a time of transition nor a territorial arrangement, and it does not presuppose that either side of the strait accepts any particular scheme of unification or separation. Linz and Stepan point out that the “stateness” question in a democratic transition — who belongs to the political community — is a precondition of democratic consolidation [Linz & Stepan 1996]. That is precisely the first question that cross-strait party expansion encounters: before there is a common electoral roll, there is no “national election” in which parties could compete.
2. The Direct Restrictions of the Current Law of the Republic of China (Taiwan)
Article 3 of the Political Parties Act (promulgated on December 6, 2017) defines a political party as a body “composed of nationals of the Republic of China” that nominates candidates to stand in elections for public office; Article 4 provides: “A political party shall take the free area of the Republic of China as its organizational territory, and may establish branch organs. A party’s principal office shall be located within the organizational territory set out in the preceding paragraph”; Article 5 requires that a party’s organization and operation conform to democratic principles; and Article 7 sets out the filing procedure for a newly established party and requires that its responsible person hold the nationality of the Republic of China and have a household registration in the country [LAW-PPA]. Under current law, therefore, the DPP cannot establish a party section on the mainland as part of its domestic organization; Article 7 is a requirement for the establishment of a new party, and cannot be applied by extension to require that an existing party re-file for every party section it establishes.
Article 2 of the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area distinguishes the Taiwan Area from the Mainland Area; Article 33 sets up prohibitions and a permission mechanism for people of the Taiwan Area holding positions in, or becoming members of, political organizations of the Mainland Area; Article 33-1 sets a permission requirement for cooperation with political bodies of the Mainland Area; and Article 5-3 establishes a high-threshold procedure for cross-strait agreements involving political issues [LAW-CSR]. These provisions do not amount to a prohibition of all exchanges, but they overturn the assumption that “cross-border party organization requires no prior legal review.”
The DPP’s own charter (in the version amended on September 28, 2019, on which this draft relies; whether there have been later amendments has not yet been verified — see Research Limitation (3)) also contains relevant arrangements. Article 3 of the charter provides that “any person aged eighteen or above who identifies with the platform of this party and is willing to abide by the provisions of this party’s charter may apply to become a member of this party”; Article 4 prohibits members from simultaneously joining another political party; Article 11 provides that the party may establish “special party sections for women, intellectual youth, indigenous peoples, industry, overseas members, or other directly subordinate special party sections”; and Article 13 provides that the total number of overseas delegates shall not exceed five percent of the total number of national party delegates [DPP-CHARTER]. The existence of overseas party sections shows that the party’s organizational network already extends beyond geographic Taiwan, but their object is overseas expatriate party members, which is a different question from registering a political party in another jurisdiction and taking part in its elections. How the overseas special party sections are to be reconciled with the organizational-territory provision of Article 4 of the Political Parties Act is a legal research project this paper has not yet completed.
3. Four Institutional Scenarios
Scenario A: the two sides of the strait are each democratic and remain divided. The mainland’s democratic constitution decides whether foreign political parties or their affiliated legal persons may register. If the DPP were to operate on the mainland, the more feasible form would be to assist in establishing an independent local political party or to form an international party alliance (on the pattern of the member parties of European parties in their several countries), rather than extending its legal personality in the Republic of China (Taiwan). Organizational activity on the mainland produces no electoral rights in the Republic of China (Taiwan).
Scenario B: the mainland establishes a new democratic constitutional order and maintains a relationship of coexistence with the Republic of China (Taiwan), and the two sides conclude a limited cooperation agreement. Cross-strait party cooperation must comply at once with the mainland’s new political parties act and with the permission requirement of Article 33-1 of the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area; unless the latter is amended, formal cooperation between the DPP and a mainland political party would still require the permission of the competent authority.
Scenario C: the two sides negotiate a common constitutional structure through their respective democratic procedures. A constitutional amendment would have to be completed under Article 12 of the Additional Articles, or a new common constitution-making process would have to deal with electoral qualifications, the delimitation of electoral districts, party registration, the regulation of political donations, judicial jurisdiction over election disputes, and safeguards of regional autonomy. Only in this scenario could a “common election” in which the DPP participates arise; and the form of the common election (a federal system, a bicameral system, regional proportional representation, or nationwide proportional representation) would determine the structure of party competition.
Scenario D: the mainland unilaterally proclaims the restoration of the constitutional order of the Republic of China, which the Republic of China (Taiwan) does not recognize. The same name of the state would not automatically produce a common electoral roll or a single party legal personality; organizational activity, legal jurisdiction, and electoral qualifications would have to be judged separately, and competing claims of legitimacy could arise. The questions of constitutional continuity and legitimacy belong to another topic; this paper records only their effect on party organization.
4. Five Minimum Thresholds across the Scenarios
In any scenario, the DPP’s cross-regional organization would require at least: (1) authorization within the party, i.e., a National Congress resolution on cross-regional organization (neither the current party platform nor any resolution contains such an authorization); (2) lawful registration, i.e., completion of the registration of the party or an affiliated legal person in the relevant jurisdiction; (3) review of membership qualifications, dealing with nationality, household registration, and dual party membership; (4) political-finance compliance, dealing with cross-border donations and restrictions on foreign funds; and (5) independent election monitoring and judicial remedies. All five of these can be observed in the future, and they therefore constitute falsifiable conditions.
Chapter Four — Conditional Scenarios of Elections and Organizational Expansion
1. Model and Parameters
Let E be the number of mainland voters lawfully qualified to vote in a given election, t the turnout, and s a party’s vote share in that population; then the hypothetical number of votes is V = E × t × s. V is only a number of votes, not a number of seats. Seats depend on the electoral system: under the current mixed system of the Republic of China (Taiwan), the 34 party-list seats are distributed by a 5% threshold and the proportions of the party vote (Article 4 of the Additional Articles), and the 73 regional seats are single-member districts. Cox’s research on the coordination effects of electoral systems points out that strategic coordination makes the effective number of competitors in a district tend toward no more than the district magnitude M plus one (the “M+1” rule): in a single-member district (M = 1) it tends toward two principal competitors, while proportional representation with a larger district magnitude leaves room for more parties [Cox 1997; the concluding discussion of the “M+1” rule is in chapter 7 of that book]. The same set of E, t, and s will therefore produce entirely different seat outcomes under different institutions.
Table 5: Purely Illustrative Scenarios (Not Polls and Not Predictions)
| Scenario | E (hypothetical) | t (hypothetical) | s (hypothetical) | V |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zero-expansion baseline | Any | Any | 0% | 0 votes |
| Illustration One | 100 million | 60% | 5% | 3 million votes |
| Illustration Two | 500 million | 65% | 10% | 32.5 million votes |
| Illustration Three | 800 million | 70% | 20% | 112 million votes |
Explanation: E is not census or voter-registration data; s has no credible polling support. There is only one observable anchor for the existing s: the proportion of the party vote that the voters of the Republic of China (Taiwan) give the DPP, which between 2012 and 2024 lay between 33.9774% and 44.0598% (the 2012 figure, 34.6178%, lies within this interval). That proportion is an observed value under a specific electorate structure, set of issues, and set of competitors, and has no extrapolative validity for mainland voters. The “zero-expansion baseline” is retained in order to prevent the model from selecting only favorable scenarios: if the DPP gives no authorization within the party, or if mainland law does not permit the registration of a foreign political party, s cannot arise in law.
2. Differences in Outcome under Four Designs of Representation
A single nationwide proportional representation: cross-regional party brands and issue alliances decide the result, and the mainland’s population scale has the greatest effect on the distribution of total seats. Regional proportional representation or a federal system: votes are counted and seats distributed separately in each region, and local organizational networks and regional issues matter more than a nationwide brand. Bicameralism: one chamber by population and one chamber by equal regional representation can protect the veto capacity of smaller regions where population differences are enormous. Before a common constitutional order is established: there is no common electoral roll, and a so-called “national election” cannot be defined. Research on consociational democracy discusses the protective effect of representative structures such as federalism and bicameralism on minority regions [Lijphart 2012]; inferring from it, this paper holds that representative structure may determine the political position of smaller regions more than any single party’s vote — a normative inference, not an empirical conclusion. For the Republic of China (Taiwan) this means that the most critical negotiating issues are representative structure and the protection of rights, not which political party could win on a population basis.
3. Party Members, Supporters, and Votes
The number of party members, the number of supporters, and the number of valid votes are three different variables. The DPP’s charter (in the version amended on September 28, 2019 — see Research Limitation (3)) sets identification with the party platform as a requirement for joining the party (Article 3), while the 1991 Basic Platform takes Taiwan as the scope of sovereignty and the 1999 Resolution defines the sovereign domain as Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu. Even if the law were to permit it in the future, whether a political party whose core identity is Taiwan’s sovereignty and the residents’ self-determination could attract mainland voters, and whether it would be willing to amend its platform to adapt to cross-regional competition, are open questions. If the party amended its core identity for cross-regional competition, it might lose its existing supporters in the Republic of China (Taiwan); if it did not amend it, its attractiveness on the mainland would be limited. This trade-off is the most important structural constraint of this chapter.
4. Falsifiable Indicators
If the following indicators appear in the future, they can test the judgments of this chapter: whether the DPP’s National Congress adopts a resolution on cross-regional organization; whether the mainland’s new constitution and political parties act permit the registration of foreign political parties or affiliated legal persons; whether the competent authority of the Republic of China (Taiwan) amends Article 4 of the Political Parties Act or approves political cooperation under Article 33-1; whether the two sides each approve a common electoral legal order through their constitutional procedures; whether electoral qualifications and electoral districts are lawfully determined by the competent organs; and whether free polling that can be publicly examined appears on the mainland. Before these indicators appear, any prediction of seats can only be purely hypothetical.
Chapter Five — Research Findings, Objections, and Research Limitations
1. Assessment of the Research Hypotheses
H1 (goal evolution is jointly associated with democratization, the responsibilities of government, and the international environment): the documentary chronology supports the description of “multifactor covariation,” but the existing evidence is insufficient to identify causation; party meeting records and faction materials are needed. H2 (the decisive conditions of cross-strait expansion are, in the first instance, the laws of association and election): directly supported by Article 4 of the current Political Parties Act and Article 33-1 of the Cross-Strait Act. H3 (the preferences of mainland voters and Taiwan’s party identifications may not coincide): there is no free polling on the mainland; it is untestable and can only stand as an open proposition. H4 (without a common constitutional order, mainland activity and electoral representation for the Republic of China (Taiwan) are two independent legal questions): directly supported by the current legal structure. H5 (local autonomy, minority protections, and judicial review are more important than enlarging the Legislative Yuan’s seats): a normative argument, supported by the comparative constitutional literature, but not an empirical conclusion.
2. Principal Objections and Responses
Objection One: discontinuity of organizational identity. Even if the DPP accepted some future arrangement, its existing legal personality could not become a cross-regional party without registration, statutory amendment, or a vote within the party. This paper accepts the point and writes it into the five thresholds of Chapter Three. Objection Two: voter preferences are not transferable. Taiwan’s party vote is an observed value under a specific electorate structure; seat models extrapolated by population multiples should be regarded as invalid. This paper’s scenario table therefore only illustrates the mechanism of calculation. Objection Three: constitutional veto points. A common political system must deal with each side’s democratic authorization, constitutional-amendment thresholds, and judicial powers; political change on the mainland does not mean that the Republic of China (Taiwan) automatically consents. Objection Four: competition among lines within the party. The coexistence of the documents of 1991, 1999, 2007, and 2019 does not mean that there is a consensus within the party on cross-strait organizational expansion; in fact, no formal document discusses the matter at all. Objection Five: the risk to representativeness. Consultation with exiles or a small number of dissidents can constitute preparatory participation, but it cannot substitute for the authorization that mainland residents give through free universal suffrage.
3. Conclusion
The DPP has developed from an opposition party at the end of martial law into a party of continuous government. Its formal documents show that the discourse of national positioning shifted from “independent state-building” to “the status quo is sovereign independence, called the Republic of China under the constitution, and changes require a plebiscite,” but the old clauses were not repealed; instead they coexist through the 2001 charter amendment and the new resolutions. The official statements of its periods in government operate within the framework of the Constitution of the Republic of China and the Cross-Strait Act. The election data show that the DPP is one of the two major parties in the Republic of China (Taiwan), but that since 2016 its party vote has been lower than the vote for its presidential candidates, and that it fluctuates markedly. On the question of expansion after a democratic transition on the mainland, this paper’s conclusion is conditional: current law does not permit the DPP to establish domestic party sections on the mainland; any cross-regional competition presupposes a common or mutually recognized constitutional arrangement, authorization within the party, and free elections on the mainland; and if a common constitutional order is to obtain democratic authorization from both sides, representative structure and the protection of rights are more critical than any party’s population advantage.
4. Research Limitations
(1) The original five-chapter paper has not been found; this draft is a reconstruction. (2) The party history chronicle and the Platform PDF record the date of the 1991 platform amendment inconsistently (06/23 and 10/12–13); the original records of the National Congress meeting have not been found. (3) The official Charter and Platform PDFs were generated on October 7 and October 1, 2019 respectively; any amendment after September 28, 2019 has not yet been verified. (4) The discrepancy of roughly 100 votes in the 2012 party-list vote has been closed on the basis of the “List of Election Results” in the Central Election Commission’s Election Record of the 8th Legislative Yuan Election (see item 4 of the Data Errata Note); the cause of the differing figures given in the summary table of the review chapter in Part Seven of the same book is not explained in the book. (5) The polling figures of the Election Study Center, National Chengchi University, were obtained by reading the chart. (6) The page-level verification of part of the academic literature has not yet been completed; the bibliographic information of the three works of Linz & Stepan, Cox, and Lijphart has been verified against publishers’ and library catalogues (see the References), and Cox’s “M+1” rule has been located in chapter 7 of that book, while the remaining page-level sources are still pending verification. (7) The total number of electors for the 10th party-list election in 2020 (19,312,105) differs by 1,000 from the total number of electors in the presidential election of the same day (19,311,105); this is an internal discrepancy of the official database and does not affect this paper’s calculations.
5. Agenda for Further Research
First, to obtain the original meeting records of the Fifth National Congress, First Session, of 1991 and of the Ninth National Congress, Second Session, of 2001; second, to compare the actual operation of the DPP’s overseas special party sections with Article 4 of the Political Parties Act; third, to systematically compile the changes in the wording on national positioning in the DPP’s campaign platforms from 2008 to 2026; fourth, to apply to the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University for the original trend data on unification–independence positions and party preferences; and fifth, to build, for the four scenarios of Chapter Three, a matrix of legal conditions that can be shared with related topics, so as to avoid duplicating the argument.
References
1. Formal Party Documents
〔DPP-PLAT〕 Democratic Progressive Party: Platform (collected edition, containing the 1991 Basic Platform and the resolutions of 1999, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2011, and 2019), PDF generated 2019-10-01, https://www.dpp.org.tw/upload/download/%E9%BB%A8%E7%B6%B1.pdf . Grade A; page numbers are the PDF’s printed page numbers.
〔DPP-CHARTER〕 Democratic Progressive Party: Charter (amended through 2019-09-28), PDF generated 2019-10-07, https://www.dpp.org.tw/upload/download/%E9%BB%A8%E7%AB%A0.pdf . Grade A.
〔DPP-HIST〕 Democratic Progressive Party: Chronicle of the Democratic Progressive Party, https://www.dpp.org.tw/about/history_3 , read on 2026-10-18. Grading: as to the party’s own resolutions, charter amendments, and organizational acts, a Grade A firsthand record; as to external facts (election results, social movements, and the like), it is only the party’s own account, to be used at Grade B or below and to be verified separately.
〔DPP-P2〕 Democratic Progressive Party: Questions and Answers on the Normal Country Resolution, 2007, https://www.dpp.org.tw/content_print/news/13 . Grade A (the party’s interpretation).
〔DPP-P3〕 Democratic Progressive Party: Normal Country Resolution, 2007-09-30, https://www.dpp.org.tw/news/contents/15 . Grade A.
〔DPP-2019〕 Democratic Progressive Party: release relating to the Resolution on Social Solidarity and Generational Win-Win, https://www.dpp.org.tw/media/contents/8778 . Grade A.
2. Laws
〔LAW-ADDL〕 Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China, Articles 1, 2, 4, and 12, National Laws and Regulations Database, https://law.moj.gov.tw/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=A0000002 . Grade A.
〔LAW-PPA〕 Political Parties Act (promulgated 2017-12-06), Articles 3, 4, 5, and 7, https://law.moj.gov.tw/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=D0020078 . Grade A.
〔LAW-CSR〕 Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, Articles 2, 5-3, 33, and 33-1, https://law.moj.gov.tw/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?PCode=Q0010001 . Grade A.
3. Election Statistics
〔CEC-DB〕 Central Election Commission election database, https://db.cec.gov.tw/ ; this draft read its nationwide public data (party votes: subjectId=L0, legisId=L4; president: subjectId=P0).
〔CEC-L-2024〕 The 11th Legislative Yuan election, voting day 2024-01-13, party-list themeId=e753a8e7a7bcc09fa51d1aea0024a843, https://db.cec.gov.tw/ElecTable/Election/ElecTickets?dataType=tickets&typeId=ELC&subjectId=L0&legisId=L4&themeId=e753a8e7a7bcc09fa51d1aea0024a843&dataLevel=N&prvCode=00&cityCode=000&areaCode=00&deptCode=000&liCode=0000 . Grade A.
〔CEC-L-2020〕 The 10th Legislative Yuan election, voting day 2020-01-11, party-list themeId=e002307160cbb898376da0c9cbb9ba16, https://db.cec.gov.tw/ElecTable/Election/ElecTickets?dataType=tickets&typeId=ELC&subjectId=L0&legisId=L4&themeId=e002307160cbb898376da0c9cbb9ba16&dataLevel=N&prvCode=00&cityCode=000&areaCode=00&deptCode=000&liCode=0000 . Grade A.
〔CEC-L-2016〕 The 9th Legislative Yuan election, voting day 2016-01-16, party-list themeId=65210a966683a5012513f09648b9463d, https://db.cec.gov.tw/ElecTable/Election/ElecTickets?dataType=tickets&typeId=ELC&subjectId=L0&legisId=L4&themeId=65210a966683a5012513f09648b9463d&dataLevel=N&prvCode=00&cityCode=000&areaCode=00&deptCode=000&liCode=0000 ; see also the Central Election Commission’s “Table for Calculating the Distribution of Elected Seats among the Parties in the 9th Nationwide Party-List and Overseas-Compatriot Legislative Yuan Election,” https://web.cec.gov.tw/api/file/d1d55b2d-4cf6-4f8e-807c-2f37db75f276.pdf ; Election Study Center, National Chengchi University: “Party Votes in the 9th Legislative Yuan Nationwide Party-List and Overseas-Compatriot Election,” PDF p. 7, https://vote.nccu.edu.tw/cec/B2016005.PDF . Grades A and B, mutually consistent.
〔CEC-L-2012〕 The 8th Legislative Yuan election, voting day 2012-01-14, party-list themeId=49aafb9a733932d689dc0373a81b3966 (database); comparison: Tainan City Election Commission (comp. and pr.), Election Record of the 13th Presidential and Vice-Presidential Election and the 8th Legislative Yuan Election in Tainan City (June 2012), printed p. 58 (PDF p. 69), https://web.cec.gov.tw/api/file/c729e26b-88ba-4db5-a9bb-824895ebae47.pdf . Officially certified data: Central Election Commission (comp. and pr.), Election Record of the 8th Legislative Yuan Election (August 2012, ISBN 978-986-03-3181-3), Part Two, Section Five, Table 1, “List of the Results of the 8th Nationwide Party-List and Overseas-Compatriot Legislative Yuan Election,” printed p. 244 (PDF p. 258), and also Part Four, Chapter Four, Section One, printed p. 309 (PDF p. 327), https://web.cec.gov.tw/api/file/ffb8f1b6-709e-40eb-aff7-ae98eb3d5da8.pdf . The database and the List of Results are both Grade A and agree vote for vote; the figures in the calculation table reproduced in the Tainan City record do not agree with the List of Results and are not used.
〔CEC-L-2008〕 The 7th Legislative Yuan election, voting day 2008-01-12, Central Election Commission database themeIds: regional 92981c3de397c3821d2d3688ca494021, lowland indigenous 745f9233b09b11d9f990dc48dc0cb6dd, highland indigenous d2632687c24852fe81c34f77caa1b78b, party-list a4a2d8b6a7d8aa63d053f7feded7f8c1; DPP regional 13 seats + party-list 14 seats = 27 seats, 113 seats in the whole chamber (summed item by item on 2026-10-18). Grade A.
〔CEC-P-2012/2016/2020/2024〕 The 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th presidential and vice-presidential elections, Central Election Commission database themeIds in sequence: fddf766f2a250a2e3688d644fda346d2, 61b4dda0ebac3332203ef3729a9a0ada, 1f7d9f4f6bfe06fdaf4db7df2ed4d60c, 4d83db17c1707e3defae5dc4d4e9c800. Grade A.
4. Official Speeches
〔PRES-2016〕 The fourteenth inaugural address of Tsai Ing-wen, President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), 2016-05-20, Chinese original: Presidential Office press release https://www.president.gov.tw/NEWS/20444 (the quotations in the body of this paper were checked verbatim against this page on 2026-10-18); official English translation https://english.president.gov.tw/News/4893 ; see also the Mainland Affairs Council’s Major Government Documents on Cross-Strait Policy https://ws.mac.gov.tw/001/Upload/OldFile/public/MMO/RPIR/book602.pdf . Grade A.
〔PRES-2021〕 Tsai Ing-wen’s 2021 National Day address, “Forging Consensus, Resolving Differences; Uniting to Protect Taiwan” (the “Four Persistences”), Chinese original: Presidential Office press release https://www.president.gov.tw/NEWS/26253 (the quotation in the body of this paper, “persist in the proposition that the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other,” was checked verbatim against this page on 2026-10-18); official English translation https://english.president.gov.tw/NEWS/6175 . Grade A.
〔PRES-2024〕 The sixteenth inaugural address of Lai Ching-te, President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), 2024-05-20, https://www.president.gov.tw/Page/700 . Grade A.
5. Polling Materials
〔ESC-TONDU〕 Election Study Center, National Chengchi University: “Distribution of Trends in Taiwanese People’s Unification–Independence Positions (1994/12–2026/06),” released 2026-07-03, https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7801&id=6963 . Grade B (chart reading).
6. Academic Literature
〔Rigger 2001〕 Shelley Rigger, From Opposition to Power: Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001. Grade C (publication information verified).
〔Fell 2005〕 Dafydd Fell, Party Politics in Taiwan: Party Change and the Democratic Evolution of Taiwan, 1991–2004. London: Routledge, 2005. DOI: 10.4324/9780203007662. Grade C (publication information verified).
〔Linz & Stepan 1996〕 Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-8018-5158-2 (paperback). Grade C (bibliographic information verified against the publisher’s and library catalogues; page-level sources pending verification).
〔Cox 1997〕 Gary W. Cox, Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World’s Electoral Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Grade C (bibliographic information verified against the publisher; the “M+1” rule appears in the concluding discussion of chapter 7 of the book; page-level sources pending verification).
〔Lijphart 2012〕 Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-300-17202-7. Grade C (bibliographic information verified against the publisher’s and library catalogues; page-level sources pending verification).
Data Errata Note
The following records the erroneous figures found in the course of revising this paper’s election data, and the basis of their correction, for checking purposes only; the data in the body of the paper follow the certified values in the Central Election Commission database and the Election Records, and the old figures listed in this note must not be cited as current data.
1. The Party-List Party Vote of the 11th Term, 2024
The party-list party vote of the 11th term, 2024. An early version gave the DPP 4,981,060 votes, the KMT 4,764,293 votes, and the Taiwan People’s Party 3,040,334 votes, and on that basis calculated an increase for the DPP of 169,819 votes from 2020 to 2024 and a decrease of 389,893 votes from 2016 to 2024. The correct values in the Central Election Commission database are 4,982,062, 4,764,576, and 3,040,615 votes; the old values were short by 1,002, 283, and 281 votes respectively; the correct differences are +170,821 votes and −388,891 votes. This error was corrected in October 2026 and re-verified by reading the Central Election Commission database directly (the party-by-party total equals the valid votes, 13,776,736). The cause of the old values has not been ascertained, and no conjecture is made.
2. The Party-List Vote of the 9th Term, 2016
The party-list vote of the 9th term, 2016. A secondary record of 794,383 votes appeared for the People First Party’s vote; the Central Election Commission’s calculation table, list of elected members, and database all give 794,838 votes, and the latter is adopted. All valid party votes, 12,190,139, have been confirmed by two independent sources: the party-by-party summation of the 18 parties in the Central Election Commission database, and the statistical table of the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University. The 10,191,055 votes given in the Central Election Commission’s calculation table are only the total of the four parties passing the threshold, not all valid votes.
3. The Party-List Vote of the 10th Term, 2020
The party-list vote of the 10th term, 2020. The 19 parties’ valid votes of 14,160,138, and the four parties’ votes and two-stage ratios, have been checked repeatedly and are consistent.
4. The Party-List Vote of the 8th Term, 2012 (Closed)
The party-list vote of the 8th term, 2012 (closed). The Election Record cited at an early stage was in fact compiled and printed by the Tainan City Election Commission; the calculation table reproduced in it gives the KMT 5,863,379 votes (44.5465%), the DPP 4,556,526 votes (34.6178%), the TSU 1,178,896 votes (8.9566%), and the People First Party 722,089 votes (5.4860%); the current data of the Central Election Commission database give the KMT 5,863,279 votes (44.5468%), the DPP 4,556,424 votes (34.6178%), the TSU 1,178,797 votes (8.9560%), and the People First Party 722,089 votes (5.4861%), with valid votes of 13,162,072. The first three parties differ by 100, 102, and 99 votes. The body of the paper adopts the database figures. Basis of closure (Grade A): Table 1, “List of Election Results,” in Part Two, Section Five of the Central Election Commission’s Election Record of the 8th Legislative Yuan Election (printed p. 244) and Part Four, Chapter Four, Section One (printed p. 309) both give the KMT 5,863,279 votes (44.5468%), the DPP 4,556,424 votes (34.6178%), and the TSU 1,178,797 votes (8.9560%); the eleven parties of Table 1 total 13,162,072, agreeing with the database vote for vote; and with 13,162,072 as the denominator, only this set of figures can reproduce the four-decimal vote shares of Table 1 (5,863,379 votes would be 44.5475%). The figures in the Tainan City record are identical to the summary table in Part Seven, “Review of Election Work,” of the same book (printed p. 368) (KMT 5,863,379, DPP 4,556,526, TSU 1,178,896); the KMT regional-vote figure of 6,339,359 given in that summary table likewise does not agree with the 6,339,301 of Chapter Four, and the book does not explain the cause. Inference: the discrepancy of roughly 100 votes belongs to the figures of the review chapter’s summary table and its local reprintings; it is not a certified result.
5. Correction of the Caliber of the Presidential-Election Table
The data for 2000, 2004, and 2008 given in the “elected presidential tickets” table of early versions were not re-verified in the later revisions; the body of the paper now uses the same-caliber table of DPP-nominated tickets for 2012–2024 (Table 2).
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v1.0 ｜ 2026-10-18
Review record: Editorial independent review, 2026-10-18. Conclusion: PASS.