Thread by @WilliamYang120

According to an opinion poll conducted by #Taiwan's TVBS, there is a major shift in the main opposition party @kuomintang's chairmanship election, which will be held next Saturday. Chang Ya-chung, viewed as a hardline unification advocate, has risen to the first place.

Unlike the previous opinion poll, this opinion poll is conducted among @kuomintang members, which could better reflect how the final election result will turn out to be. Chang's approval rating stands at 30.6%, leading former chairman Eric Chu's 27.5%.

Meanwhile, current chairman @JohnnyChiang12 only has 12.8%. While the timeframe of the opinion poll did include the latest controversy of the election, which was when KMT's election supervisory decided to refer Chang to the disciplinary committee.

The committee originally decided to refer Chang to the disciplinary committee because they claimed that Chang launched repeated verbal attacks against Eric Chu during the campaign.

After other candidates, including Eric Chu, questioned the decision, the committee rescinded their decision yesterday, but observers said the whole controversy has given Chang supposedly more support through sympathy.

According to Storm Media in #Taiwan, some KMT city councilors and legislators have expressed concern about the possibility of Chang winning the election, as they view his hardline unification stance as a threat to KMT appealing to general voters in Taiwan.

KMT legislators are even concerned that a possible KMT under Chang's leadership will not be able to successfully pulled off some important recall or referendum votes that are scheduled to take place at the end of this year. storm.mg/article/3942301

For example, in the recall referendum for the Taiwan Statebuilding Party‘s legislator Chen Bo-Wei, KMT legislators think as long as Chen can launch a campaign under the slogan "fighting against #China to safeguard #Taiwan," which can be viewed as a call to ...

... not support a KMT under Chang's leadership, Chen could potentially avoid being recalled. Some even think that if Chang became KMT's party chairman, the ruling party @DPPonline simply has to frame the referendum over the US pork import issue as ...

... whether voters support a unification advocate like Chang, the DPP could potentially trigger a lot of young people and middle voters to come out and vote against the referendum.

One former party leader told Storm Media that he isn't too surprised about the outcome of Chang Ya-Chung surpassing Eric Chu in the opinion poll, as @kuomintang's structure is very detached from the social structure in #Taiwan.

According to the report, 70% of the party members who can vote in the chairman election are 65 years old or older, and only around 3% of the party members who can vote are under the age of 40.