As the Taipei mayoral election heats up, Wang Hongen, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, unexpectedly discovered that the number of polls published for the 2026 Taipei mayoral election has only been eight times so far, which is one-fifth of the past. He also tried to analyze the possible reasons for this result.
Wang Hongen wrote in Thought Tank that only 8 Taipei mayoral polls were announced in Taiwan in the 56 days before this election. Compared with 2014 (56 times), 2018 (28 times) and 2022 (32 times), the frequency of announcements has dropped significantly. He believes that this is not because each camp has no money to conduct polls or is not interested in the election in the district. All parties are constantly tracking the numbers internally, and not publishing polls is actually a consensus across camps.
"Not announcing is a strategy, not without numbers." Wang Hongen analyzed that when the polls show that there is still a gap between the two sides but has not been widened, and the incumbent's support is less than half and slowly declining; although the challenger continues to catch up, but has not yet reached the critical point of a comeback that is "within reach", both parties will tend to choose to fold their cards.
He analyzed that for the incumbent, if the public opinion poll shows that the support has dropped from a high point or the non-committal rate is high, even if it still maintains the lead, it will cause a sense of crisis or disappointment among the supporters, making the original supporters feel that "it really is not good!" A large number of non-committals also give challengers or intermediate voters the possibility of a comeback. In this case, for the incumbent, the harm caused by publishing the poll may be greater than the effect of stabilizing military morale, so choosing not to publish it will be a more reasonable strategy.
The second possibility is that the incumbent has a stable majority in the polls, but the challenger quickly catches up and absorbs undecided and intermediate voters. However, in this case, the incentive for both parties to fold is relatively low, because at this time the incumbent still has the incentive to publish polls to stabilize military morale. If the incumbent is still supported by more than half, the polls can be published to let the challenger's supporters know that there is little hope, so that people who only want to follow the trend and vote for the winner can join the incumbent camp. If the challenger continues to catch up quickly, he will also have a public motive, telling supporters that the recent street sweeps, statements, and campaigns are effective, and boosting morale to continue working hard.
Wang Hongen believes that by arranging various situations, the current situation where all parties do not announce the poll numbers may be that there is still a small gap between the two sides but not big, the incumbent does not have a majority and is slowly declining, the challenger is slowly rising but still cannot catch up to within reach, and the current victory or defeat of both parties has not changed. In this case, the incumbents, challengers, and other camps will have less incentive to release poll numbers, and the release of polls itself will become a weaponized strategy.
Wang Hongen finally said that of course it is conceivable that if this situation continues to change, when the two sides catch up close enough, or when the gap between the two sides widens very far again, then the motivation of all parties to publish polls will increase again.
