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EDITORIAL: Ignore the
youth vote at your peril
Neither the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nor the Chinese Nationalist Party
(KMT) tickets are doing themselves any favors in their presidential campaigns by
throwing all their eggs in the cross-strait political basket.
Although DPP and KMT diehards eat, drink and sleep cross-strait political
bickering, the majority of Taiwanese are concerned about getting and holding on
to jobs, being able to buy a home and being able to afford to educate their
children.
“It’s the economy, stupid,” to quote the 1992 campaign slogan of former US
president Bill Clinton, who beat his predecessor George H.W. Bush because the
Republican candidate focused too much on geostrategy.
This slogan could be directed at both President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and DPP
Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), neither of whom has devoted much campaign time
to explaining what they intend to do about the faltering economy if they win the
Jan. 14 election.
No group is more concerned about jobs than voters in their 20s. With an
unemployment rate of about 7 percent, stagnant salaries hovering not far off the
minimum wage mark and astronomical housing prices, these voters are not enjoying
the life promised to them when they were in school. In fact, if things don’t
change, they are looking at even harder lives in the years to come.
This big group of swing voters — 3.5 million at last count — is fed up with the
candidates’ reluctance to stray from their entrenched positions on relations
with China. Young voters want to hear about the here and the now, not how Taiwan
can be a regional peacemaker or how the nation can protect its sovereignty.
This is a big part of the reason that Ma’s popularity plummeted after he floated
the idea of signing a peace accord with China within the next 10 years. Before
Ma gave that speech in the middle of last month, both campaigns had been
focusing on making money for the nation, mostly steering clear of
anti-corruption politics, historical wrongs or the elephant next door.
At that time, Ma enjoyed a double-digit lead in approval rating over Tsai in
some polls, though arguably they were conducted by pan-blue pollsters. However,
as soon as he opened his mouth about the peace pact, his approval ratings
plummeted, with his lead for the first time falling to within the margin of
error in a China Times poll on Tuesday.
The DPP would be wrong to only read into this that the public disapproved of the
peace pact idea and thus focus all its efforts on blasting Ma’s cross-strait
stance. The truth is that the public, young voters in particular, are
disappointed at Ma for bringing cross-strait issues back into the spotlight.
Tsai is not doing herself any favors by taking Ma’s bait and focusing her
campaign attacks on his cross-strait policies. Although her popularity in the
past few weeks has soared compared with Ma’s, it could be even higher if she
were to propose some ways out of this economic mess that made sense to young
voters — and their elders — and actually sounded feasible.
Ma and the KMT would likewise be well-advised to stick to the crucial issues,
those that count to a group that won’t be voting along ideological lines defined
by 60 years of confrontation across the Taiwan Strait and here at home.
In this race, it is the candidate who figures out how to appeal to the youth
vote with sound economic policies who will be most likely to win.
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