A real-time estimate of who is likely to win Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election, based on an unweighted average of opinion polls conducted by various media outlets and political parties.
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We're less than 100 days away from Taiwan’s presidential election, which will be held on January 11, 2020.
Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election is about the survival of democracy for a population of 23 million. Beyond domestic policies, however, Taiwan’s upcoming elections will heavily influence the country’s relations with two superpowers: China and the United States.
The continuance of Taiwanese values and democratic freedoms might depend on whether Taiwan will see another four years under President Tsai Ing-wen of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) or elect the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Han Kuo-yu.
Third-party candidates are not included in our tracker, see methodology for details.
Key Events
December 18, 2019: All three candidates will participate in their first televised policy presentation.
November 22, 2019: An alleged Chinese defector Wang Liqiang applied for asylum in Australia and in a statement detailed China’s efforts in meddling with Taiwan’s elections and the Hong Kong protests.
November 17, 2019: Tsai Ing-wen names William Lai, who has previously lost the DPP primary against Tsai, as her running mate.
November 13, 2019: People First Party Chairman James Soong declares his run in the 2020 presidential election. This is the fourth time he’s running for president after three previous defeats. Soong says this will be the last “battle” of his political career.
November 12, 2019: Former legislative speaker Wang Jyn-ping withdraws from the presidential race and said he had “lost the last chance to run,” implying that he did not secure a nomination from the People First Party.
November 11, 2019: Han names Chang San-cheng, who briefly served as former President Ma Ying-jeou’s premier, as his running mate. Chang is an independent politician and a tech expert who used to be a Google executive. He criticized the current Tsai administration and government bureaucracy for hindering societal progress and digital development.
November 4, 2019: China’s Taiwan Affairs Office announces an updated “26 measures” to attract Taiwanese citizens and businesses to “return home.” The measures are criticized by the Tsai administration as a malicious attempt to influence the upcoming elections.
November 2, 2019: Annette Lu drops her presidential bid as she fails to collect the required 280,384 signatures to qualify as a candidate.
October 16, 2019: Han Kuo-yu announces a three-month leave from the mayoral office to focus on his presidential campaign.
September 20, 2019: Kiribati follows the Solomon Islands in severing ties with Taiwan, leaving Taiwan with only 15 official diplomatic allies.
September 16, 2019: Foxconn founder Terry Guo withdraws from the presidential race. Annette Lu declares her run for presidency on behalf of Formosa Alliance.
September 16, 2019: The Solomon Islands severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan, switching allegiance to China. In response, President Tsai Ing-wen said she will neither accept Beijing’s dollar diplomacy nor “one country, two systems.”
September 12, 2019: Terry Guo announces his withdrawal from Kuomintang, calling the party “conservative and archaic.” Many speculate his withdrawal as a move to prepare for an independent run.
August 16, 2019: Amid the U.S.-China trade war, the Trump administration backs the US$8 billion F-16V fighter jet sales to Taiwan, prompting China to warn against the arms deal.
August 11, 2019: A young female medic in Hong Kong is shot in the eye during protest clashes, stirring further public anger. Her injury rallies supporters around the globe, including Taiwan, to speak out against police brutality in Hong Kong.
August 6, 2019: Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je establishes Taiwan People’s Party amid speculation of his 2020 presidential run. Ko, who’s popular among median voters, might tilt the election results if he joins the race.
August 1, 2019: Legislator Freddy Lim announces his departure from the New Power Party to run as independent and states his support for Tsai, “a candidate who’s not pro-China.”
July 31, 2019: China announces a tourism ban for individuals traveling to Taiwan. A similar tactic was used to undermine Tsai’s presidency when she was elected in 2016.
July 24, 2019: Han climbs up a tree to “inspect” the severity of dengue fever, an act widely reported by local media in Taiwan, prompting public criticism online. Since the tree-climbing incident, Han continues to garner negative press with examples like referring to migrant workers in Taiwan as “a bunch of chickens” and showing off his pack of cigarettes during a Facebook live stream.
July 22, 2019: New Power Party Legislator Huang Kuo-chang reveals the cigarettes smuggling scandal in wake of Tsai’s recent overseas trip.
July 20, 2019: Formosa Alliance is established as a political party. In April 2019, the party had pushed for an independence referendum, a new constitution, a new national anthem, and even a new national flag.
July 15, 2019: Han is confirmed as KMT’s presidential candidate, beating Foxconn founder Terry Guo in the party’s primary polls.
July 11, 2019: Tsai embarks on a trip to visit Caribbean diplomatic allies with stopovers in the United States. Outraged by Tsai’s transit, Beijing urges the U.S. to not allow her visit to avoid harming the peace and stability in the Taiwan strait.
June 13, 2019: Tsai defeats former Premier William Lai in the DPP primary race by 8.2 percent and is nominated to run for re-election.
June 8, 2019: Hong Kong protests begin as 1 million march on the streets over the unpopular extradition bill.
May 17, 2019: Taiwan becomes the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.
Methodology
By aggregating a collection of pollsters that have more reliable and transparent methodologies, we have a better picture of voter support and trends in this year's presidential election. We achieved this by taking an unweighted aggregation of the five most recognized and widely accepted pollsters in Taiwan and calculating a basis spline (with a beta of 0.3) based on each poll result listed below. We chose to use an unweighted aggregation rather than a weighted one because the lack of historical polling data in Taiwan makes it difficult to create sophisticated polling models.
