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.
Latest Updates
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
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 diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
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 departure from Kuomintang.
August 16, 2019: Amid the U.S.-China trade war, the Trump administration backs the F-16 fighter jet sale 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.
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 15, 2019: Han is confirmed as KMT’s presidential candidate, beating Foxconn founder Terry Guo in the party’s primary polls.
June 13, 2019: Tsai defeats former Premier William Lai in the DPP primary race 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 basic spline 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.
For our current poll tracker, we decided to only include Tsai Ing-wen and Han Kuo-yu since polling results that include third-party candidates such as Annette Lu are not substantial enough to provide reliable information. We will, however, continue to monitor the support of all candidates and adjust our poll tracker if necessary.
