2016 Taiwanese presidential election

2016 Taiwanese presidential election

← 2012 16 January 2016 (2016-01-16)[1] 2020 →
Registered	18,782,991
Turnout	66.27% (8.11pp)
Nominee Tsai Ing-wen Eric Chu James Soong Party DPP Kuomintang People First Running mate Chen Chien-jen Wang Ju-hsuan Hsu Hsin-ying Popular vote 6,894,744 3,813,365 1,576,861 Percentage 56.12% 31.04% 12.84%
Results by county-level units Results by township-level units
President before election Ma Ying-jeou Kuomintang Elected President Tsai Ing-wen DPP

Presidential elections were held in Taiwan on 16 January 2016. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Tsai Ing-wen with her independent running mate Chen Chien-jen won over Eric Chu of the Kuomintang (KMT) and James Soong of the People First Party (PFP). Tsai became the first female president in Taiwan, as well as in the Chinese-speaking world.^[2]

A second time presidential candidate, Tsai secured the DPP's nomination uncontested as early as February 2015, while KMT candidate Hung Hsiu-chu who won the party's nomination in July 2015, was trailing behind Tsai by double digits.^[3] Alarmed by Hung's perceived pro-Beijing stance, the KMT held a special party congress to nullify Hung's candidacy in a controversial move, and replaced her with the party chairman Eric Chu, less than a hundred days before the general election.^[4] However, Chu did not fare much better than Hung in the polls, and it was almost certain that Tsai was going to win weeks before the election. Veteran politician James Soong also announced his presidential campaign for the fourth time, making the election a three-way contest.

Some 12 million voters, 66% of the total registered voters, cast their votes; this was the lowest turnout since the office was first directly elected in 1996.^[5] Tsai won 6.89 million votes, leading Chu, who received 3.81 million votes, by 3.08 million votes. The vote difference became the second highest winning margin since the first direct presidential election in 1996.^[6] Tsai also won with 56.1%, the second-largest vote share claimed by a presidential candidate since Ma Ying-jeou in the 2008 election. It was the second time the DPP won the presidency since Chen Shui-bian's victory in 2000. The DPP also won the Legislative Yuan election held on the same day, which secured a DPP majority in the legislature.