Divergent Popular Support for the DPP and the Taiwan Independence Movement, 2000–2012

Abstract

Mainstream views in China tend to believe that lower popular support for the DPP shown in the 2008 presidential election indicates parallel declining support for the Taiwan Independence Movement (TIM). However, this study shows that during the DPP administration of 2000–2008, popular support for the DPP and the TIM has become divergent: at the aggregate level, popular support for the DPP has generally declined since 2000, but that for the TIM has actually increased and then remained stable; at the individual level, Taiwanese people's dissatisfaction with the DPP administration significantly reduced their support for the DPP in 2008, but had no independent effect on their nationalist sentiment. Further analysis of the TIM's support base shows that the supposedly pro-status-quo pan-blue camp actually provided an increasing number of Taiwanese nationalists, which stabilized popular Taiwanese nationalism and weakened the DPP's monopoly of it.