Taiwan election 2024: results sound early knell for opposition hopes

Around an hour after the polls had closed, some opposition supporters had already accepted that it was not to be their day

Pre-election opinion polls had consistently put the DPP’s William Lai ahead of his two rivals, and results sound bore out this prediction

Reading Time:3 minutes

DPP supporters cheer outside the party’s headquarters as it becomes apparent that William Lai had won the presidential race. Photo: SCMP

Published: 10:29pm, 13 Jan 2024Updated: 5:32pm, 10 Apr 2024

It did not take long for the result of Taiwan’s presidential election to become apparent after the polls closed.

Even before the final results had been announced, Taiwanese media and political parties had been publishing their own estimates based on the live counts from the island’s 17,000 polling stations – all consistently showing the Democratic Progressive Party’s William Lai Ching-te leading his two opponents.

At around 8pm – four hours after the polls had closed – the two other candidates, the Kuomintang’s Hou Yu-ih and Ko Wen-je from the smaller Taiwan People’s Party – both threw in the towel and conceded defeat.

But even an hour into the count, some of their supporters had already accepted that it was not going to be their day.

“I’m not disappointed, I knew he was unlikely to win,” one of Ko’s supporters, a 45-year-old named Huang, said.

The Taipei resident who works in the logistics industry had brought his daughter along with him to mingle with the crowds rallying outside Ko’s campaign office to watch the results coming in and it was already clear that their candidate was trailing in third place in line with the pre-election opinion polls.

“The votes Ko got are already way more than I expected given his manpower and resources available as a third-party candidate,” Huang said.

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