The Art of Thanking in Taiwan's Elections
In Taiwan, after election night, candidates have one final task: an elaborate thank-you tour, performed in person. For some this can take weeks. But what’s this all for?
By Yiwei Jin
It’s three days after election night. A motorcade is moving slowly through the narrow streets of old town Taipei. A campaign truck leads the way, carrying a politician and some staff on its back. The team has one job: to shake as many hands and wave to as many people as possible. The air is thick with vibration from the giant truck-mounted megaphones. “Thank you for your vote!” The megaphones say.
Most politicians address their supporters after winning or losing an election. In Taiwan, however, politicians try to thank everyone regardless of whether they had supported them. They do so in a personal thanking tour called xiepiao (謝票), or “vote-thanking” in English. To cover the entire riding, the tour sometimes takes several weeks.
Little has been written on xiepiao, which is curious, as it is often discussed in Taiwan. For some people, especially if they are young, it is one of the things that everyone does but no one seems to know why. Miao Po-Ya (苗博雅), a first-time city councillor in Taipei, once mentioned on a popular talk show that they were doing xiepiaonon-stop for over a week. The host, somewhat surprised, asked whether she happened to thank any non-supporters while on the thanking tour.
“Yeah! People who voted for me are in the minority, only around six percent. So you know, ninety-something percent did not support me.” Miao laughed. The audience laughed with her.
Xiepiao was first reported during the 1950-51 elections under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). The KMT led a single-party regime with a limited range of permissible policy positions, so candidates had to rely on personal qualities to stand out. On top of that, illiteracy was prevalent, as journalists at the time reported that most voters could not even read the ballot. At a time when radio was a luxury item, the only way for candidates to reach most voters was speaking to them personally. The emergence of xiepiao was thus preceded by a personality-driven election campaign.
Chiayi City mayor Huang Min-hui (黃敏惠) on her xiepiao tour after her election win November 2018. Photo courtesy of PTS.
Things have changed since then. The rise of democratic politics led to a healthy spectrum of policy proposals offered by candidates in different parties. Literacy and media accessibility improved, and most voters today can readily learn about candidates from the media. The upshot: more voters have turned to policy and value as basis for support, and fewer see any reason to deal with politicians personally. Personal persuasion is no longer the most effective campaign strategy. Sometimes it’s not even necessary.
Correspondingly, the foundation for xiepiao has weakened, and the practice seems to have waned, particularly in the urban north. In a survey I conducted in Taipei, 59 percent out of 109 voters said they didn’t care about xiepiao at all. Another eight percent saw it negatively. Only around 30 percent said it was important and would affect their view on candidates.
“I never remember who’s doing xiepiao,” a young hostel worker told me, “because I don’t pay attention to it. If someone does a really elaborate xiepiao, I become suspicious. Where is the money coming from?”
“Imagine you worked the whole day,” complained a middle-aged consultant, “and you were getting ready to relax, but then the xiepiao people came and woke your kids up. Wouldn’t you hate them?”
Curious about whether politicians knew of the widespread apathy toward xiepiao, I took the question to two Taipei city councillors who had substantial thanking tours after the last election. Both said that they knew about the indifference. But for them, election is not about doing the most popular thing for everyone. Rather it is about doing a popular thing for agroup, one at a time.
“Xiepiao is meant for the voters whom we interact with, so I can understand if, for example, young people don’t care about it. But for those who are active in this community, we have met them before, so for them it’s meaningful to be thanked,” said one of the councillors. That councillor had also just wrapped up a meeting with some parents. A week before the interview, I saw her at a local Mother’s Day celebration. She was handing out carnation bouquets and under-eye masks.
Data from my survey confirm what the councillor said. Voters who had interacted with elected officials were threetimes more likely to care about xiepiao. If xiepiao were a candidate, these voters would be its core supporters.
Personal contact between voters and politicians set xiepiao in motion almost seven decades ago. Such influence continues today.
Survey data also show an age gap in voters’ attitude toward xiepiao. Over half of voters over the age of 60 said itwould affect their candidate preference, while only 15 percent of voter under the age of 29 said so.
Does this mean that the practice of xiepiao is rooted in some voters’ experience during a period of history that is unlikely to be replicated for voters today? The future of xiepiao rests on the answer to this question. If voters today consider it important mostly because of old habits and beliefs, then the need for it will fade away with time. But if voters also need to be in touch with politicians due to real issues, then they will continue to value it for its role in facilitating and maintaining such contacts.
The numbers cited above certainly don’t look good for xiepiao’s future trajectory. However, they do not tell the whole story. In Taiwan, elected officials are tasked with all kinds of administrative duties; certifying documents, providing meal service, investigating infrastructural problems, and hosting community activities are only a small portion of the items. If voters want a broken street light fixed, if they need arbitration for a neighbourhood dispute, or if a pile of garbage is affecting their business, then contacting a local elected official would likely be their best bet. The need for service of this nature may seem trivial for voters who don’t need it. But for those that do, regardless of age, it is natural that they support candidates who appear accessible and diligent.
And how do they know? Giving up rest after an election — that looks like diligence. Travelling to see voters in person — that sounds accessible. Xiepiao, of course, is about both.
The question is whether service needs will drive enough voters to connect with politicians personally. The question is also whether other occasions of voter-politician interaction will continue to exist. While I don’t have the answer to these questions, what I can say is this: the future of xiepiao depends on enough voters having personal ties with politicians — ties that call for reciprocity. The day that it disappears, if it were to happen, will likely mark a fundamental shift in how Taiwanese voters relate to their elected officials.
Acknowledgements:
I’d like to thank Asian Institute’s Big Ideas Competition for funding this research project, and thank Dr. Dylan Clark, Dr. Victor Falkenheim and Dr. Chuang Ya-Chung for their comments and insights. I am also grateful to the interview participants, who kindly gave up their time to answer questions from someone they had never met. Without them this project would not have been possible.
