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Abstract
How did Han Kuo-yu shoot from political obscurity to become the mayor of Kaohsiung and then the KMT presidential candidate? This paper argues that Han’s rise was grounded in his populist appeal. Han told voters that things should have been better for ordinary people except that establishment politicians had consistently failed to represent their interests. This paper examines Han’s populist rhetoric with an in-depth look at Han’s statements in the 2017 KMT party chair election and 2018 Kaohsiung mayoral campaign. It then looks at public opinion data from the 2018 Kaohsiung mayoral election to see whether voters absorbed that rhetoric. There are, in fact, clear echoes of Han’s populist rhetoric in the survey data. Acceptance of Han’s rhetoric was associated with a vote for Han, even among voters who were not traditional KMT constituents. That is, Han’s populist rhetoric played a central role in expanding his appeal and enabling him to secure an unlikely victory in Kaohsiung.
Abstract
Prediction Markets have been widely used abroad to forecast election results for many years. It has also been proved that such a mechanism can accurately predict election outcomes. Therefore, this paper would like to understand whether prediction markets can accurately predict Taiwan's election outcomes. First, this paper introduces the mechanism of prediction markets and then applies the prediction market mechanism to predict Taiwan's elections. According to the data provided by the Exchange for Future Events, we find that the prediction markets mechanism has accurately predicted the outcomes of Taiwan's Taipei and Kaohsiung mayoral elections in 2006, and Taiwan's presidential election and legislator election in 2008. For these three elections, the predictive accuracy of prediction markets is higher than (unweighted) opinion poll surveys conducted during the same period. This paper then discusses the differences between prediction market and opinion survey.
