2024 Taiwan Election: Exit-poll in Taoyuan City — Research Data

Doublethink Lab

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Doublethink Lab

11 min readJan 19, 2024

Eric Hsu, Researcher, Doublethink Lab

Key findings:

When asked about the source of political information they receive, 55.9% of respondents stated that it comes from online news media and news channels. When combining “online video content creators” and “Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs or influencers) on social platforms,” the percentage exceeds 40%. A notable difference from telephone surveys is that the proportion coming directly from “a political figure itself” is higher than that from “pundits or current affairs commentators,” accounting for 35.36%.
In the data from exit interviews, 36.55% of respondents claimed that misinformation or online manipulation related to the presidential election primarily came from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), followed by 17.62% who believed it was spread across all camps. The Kuomintang (KMT) accounted for 16.79%, and 8.21% attributed it to the People’s Republic of China/China.
Looking at the export interview data specifically for Taoyuan City, regarding party support, 35.83% of respondents expressed the most support for the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), followed by the Democratic Progressive Party at 25.24%, and the Kuomintang at 16.43%. Concerning the least favored political parties, 32.02% and 30.24% of respondents indicated a dislike for the Democratic Progressive Party and the Kuomintang, respectively.
In exit interview data, 71.43% of respondents stated that “in any situation, democratic politics is the best system.” Additionally, 53.09% and 67.86% of respondents expressed a leaning towards being satisfied with and trusting Taiwan’s current democratic situation and electoral system.
Regarding the perception of a significant increase in prices and the urgent need to address housing justice in Taiwan, 76.67% and 86.07% of respondents in Taoyuan City expressed agreement with these statements.
Concerning allegations such as “the Taiwanese government benefits specific companies, providing citizens with subpar vaccines and contaminated eggs” and “the ruling party/DPP is heavily involved in nepotism and corruption,” 58.45% and 66.79% of Taoyuan City export interview respondents tended to agree with these statements.
A notable 61.07% of export interview respondents leaned towards disagreeing with the statement “The current ruling Democratic Progressive Party is no different from the Communist Party, and Taiwan has no freedom of speech.”
Overall, compared to nationwide telephone survey data, Taoyuan City’s export interview data shows a higher inclination towards agreeing with skepticism theories related to the United States. Statements such as “The United States only wants to exploit Taiwan…” (46.91%), “The United States uses Taiwan to provoke China…” (43.46%), and “In case of Chinese military aggression against Taiwan, the United States definitely won’t intervene to assist Taiwan…” (47.61%) were areas where respondents tended to agree. The inclination to agree with the statement “The United States uses Taiwan to provoke China and attempts to push Taiwan into war” was significantly higher by 5.56% compared to telephone survey data.

Background:

Based on Doublethink Lab’s previous research, reports and observation, the strategy of information manipulation in Taiwan has shifted towards conspiracy types of narrative making it more challenging to debunk. These conspiratorial narratives also further establish and reinforce cognitive bias with the long term objective to increase citizens’ distrust towards the government and overall polarization in Taiwanese society. .

For the 2024 Taiwan presidential election, Doublethink Lab conducted an election survey via telephone interviews and exit poll surveys. The surveys aim to better understand the context in which Taiwan’s society and overall public opinion are subjected to foreign information manipulation and evaluate the scope and effectiveness of its narrative dissemination. Our survey asked questions related to (foreign) information manipulation narratives that we have observed prior to the election, and explored the impact of these information manipulation narratives on the voting intentions, democratic satisfaction in Taiwan and other factors.

This project is part of the Doublethink Lab’s 2024 MHub project. In response to potential Foreign Information Manipulation Interference (FIMI) during the early 2024 presidential election in Taiwan, Doublethink Lab collaborated with domestic fact-checking organizations, research units, and civil society groups. Together, we integrated civilian resources and analytical capabilities through the “Foreign Interference MHub” project to collectively engage in the observation of foreign influence in the elections. For more details about the project, please refer to the public announcement.

Due to Taiwan’s role in global geopolitical affairs makes the outcome of this presidential election a significant demonstration for the development of the global democratic society and against the expansion of authoritarianism.The election will also have profound effects on the political situation and regional stability in the Asia-Pacific region. Below, we will first release the data from our exit-poll survey. We anticipate providing a more comprehensive analysis and report around the Lunar New Year for reference.

Relevant projects in the previous elections:

Since Doublethink Lab’s establishment in 2019, we have not only conducted exit polls for the 2020 presidential election, but also executed similar exit-polls and online surveys during the 2022 local elections. The survey data and analysis results from those election cycles have been provided.

Methodology:

During this project period, two investigations were conducted: exit-poll surveys in Taoyuan City, and pre-election telephone surveys during the first week of January 2024.

The two surveys are similar in structure, with the exit-poll survey having 40 questions and the pre-election telephone survey having 44 questions. To conduct the exit-poll survey, we recruited 39 interviewers who were subsequently trained. Interviewers were assigned to conduct interviews on election day in all districts of Taoyuan City.

Taoyuan City is the most ethnically diverse urban area in Taiwan; its population comprises communities of Taiwanese Minnan people, Taiwanese Hakka people, Taiwanese Mainlanders, Taiwanese indigenous people, Taiwanese new immigrants and so on. In addition to its demographic diversity, Taoyuan City stands out for its rich diversity of industries, encompassing the service sector, manufacturing, agriculture, and an emerging tech industry. Furthermore, compared to New Taipei, Taipei, or Kaohsiung City, Taoyuan City’s industrial representation is more diverse and abundant.

Due to the strategy of Taiwan’s third political force, the Taiwan People’s Party, in dividing the pan-blue votes, Taoyuan City, currently governed by the pan-blue camp, served as a subject of research for observing the future political landscape of Taiwan. Additionally, in the context of the presidential election, Hou Yu-ih, who was also a candidate, governs New Taipei City, where a noticeable trend of Taoyuan’s youth population have migrated from in recent years.

As a result, we allocated our resources to conduct interviews in all 13 administrative districts of Taoyuan City. To further refine the sampling method within Taoyuan City, voting booths were selected using a pre-established criterion of excluding the last 10% of voters from each administrative district. Random sampling was then applied to the remaining voting booths.

The exit-poll survey was conducted using the tablet-based TIGCR-CAPI system developed by the Center for Taiwan Political Economy and Communication Research (TIGCR) at National Chengchi University. The actual polling stations where the exit-poll surveys were conducted in Taoyuan City are as follows:

See the detailed data here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Nh2-vKGjkmy_ywPyFDHuv5LATeXG_pyn7oqVye7xZM/edit?usp=sharing

Preliminary conclusion

Through a brief cross-analysis, we have derived the following preliminary conclusions. Further cross-analysis and correlation results will be presented in subsequent comprehensive analysis reports.

In both surveys, we can see that the influence of “Online video content creators” and “Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs or influencers) on social platforms” on politics in Taiwan continues to grow. Compared with the data from our survey of the 2022 local elections (21.8%) increased around 18% to approximately 40%.

The largest proportion of respondents believe the DPP is primarily responsible for the creation and spread of election related information manipulation (Telephone survey: 26.6%, Taoyuan exit poll: 36.55%). Compared with the online survey from our survey to the 2022 local election, it slightly increased by around 3%.

A democratic system continues to be preferred by most respondents as the best system for Taiwan, with more than half of respondents from both surveys responding that they are satisfied with Taiwan’s democracy, and trust the election system. For supporters of each party, the order of both preference for democracy and trust in the electoral system is: DPP, TPP, then KMT. What is worth mentioning is, compared to the proportion that believes authoritarianism might be preferable in certain situations, there has been a slight increase in the proportion that perceives no significant difference between political systems. In contrast to the 8.9% recorded in the 2022 online survey, the current percentages show a slight uptick in both export and telephone interviews, with 10.36% in export and 19.6% in telephone interviews.

In both surveys, over 60% of respondents disagree with the statement that “The current ruling party DPP is no different than the CCP, and Taiwan does not have freedom of speech.” DPP supporters have the highest percentage of disagreement, followed by the Taiwan People’s Party, and then the Kuomintang (KMT).

On average, narratives pertaining to US skepticism are believed by around half of all respondents. For the narrative “the US cannot be trusted, and just wants to hollow out and use Taiwan,” 80% of DPP supporters disagreed, and respectively 80% and 70% of both KMT and TPP supporters agreed.

As the previous point indicates, overall we see significant polarization between DPP and the opposition KMT and TPP parties along the lines of key strategic narratives observed in the CCP’s information manipulation campaigns targeting Taiwan, including US skepticism, and attacks on the DPP for alleged corruption and incompetence.

Limitations:

Practical Operations of Data Collection

One of the data collection methods in this project involved implementing surveys in all 13 administrative districts in Taoyuan City on election day according to our sampling method. However, during face-to-face interviews, voters from different neighborhoods may have been present at some of the same polling stations, potentially causing errors in data collection.

Duration of Face-to-Face Interviews and Discrepancies in Tablet Operation by Respondents

In the implementation process of the outbound interviews, researchers compressed the questionnaires so that the response times were between 5 and 10 minutes. The goal of this was to ensure that respondents could retain maximum concentration when completing the questionnaire. However, based on observations during fieldwork and the feedback from interviewers, some respondents still exhibited signs of impatience after responding on tablets for more than 5 minutes. Additionally, some interviewers reflected that conducting interviews with tablets might have posed difficulties for respondents who were less familiar with operating them, which may have affected data collection.

Acknowledgements:

This project would like to extend special thanks to Dr. Thung-Hong Lin, a full-time research fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, for providing numerous suggestions and ideas in aspects such as questionnaire design, research logic, and sampling methods during the project preparation stage. Additionally, we express our gratitude to the CAPI System development team, represented by Guo Zi-Jing, from the Center for Taiwan Political Economy and Communication, National Chengchi University, for assisting with the setup of the exit-poll questionnaire system and the interview design. All matters arising from this project and report are the sole responsibility of the Doublethink Lab.