All 24 Kuomintang lawmakers facing recall votes on July 26 have retained their seats in Taiwan's legislature. The mass recall movement, which began from civic groups and was supported by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, saw months of campaigning across Taiwan. With these results, the KMT retains their combined majority in the legislature, and the DPP will continue to be the minority in the legislature.
00:00We begin today with the latest on Taiwan's largest ever recall election.
00:05All of the two dozen opposition Kuomintang lawmakers targeted by recall campaigns look set to keep their seats.
00:12Voters cast their ballots from 8am to 4pm, and vote counting began right after polls closed.
00:19We'll have more analysis of the results later in the show.
00:22But these results aren't the end of the story.
00:24Seven more KMT lawmakers will face recalls in late August.
00:30First, though, let's go to Tiffany Wong, who's live in the Taiwan Plus newsroom.
00:34Tiffany, what's the latest?
00:39Hi, Laurel. Well, the Central Election Commission is still finishing getting those final vote counts in,
00:45but it does look like those 24 Kuomintang lawmakers who were facing recall will be able to keep their seats in Taiwan's legislature.
00:53Many of them have already come out tonight saying that they have survived these recall votes.
00:59Now, today, Taiwanese people came out to vote, and it looks like about a 50 percent voter turnout tonight.
01:06That's pretty outstanding for a non-presidential election.
01:11And in all of these cases, the votes against the recall exceeded the votes in favor of recall.
01:18And it looks like just a few of them made that 25 percent threshold of votes in favor needed to remove those lawmakers.
01:26But since those votes against exceeded that, they were not able to pass.
01:31Again, we're still waiting for the final result from the CEC.
01:35But in earlier stages, we did see, you know, a lot of these recall campaigns seem to have some pretty widespread public support.
01:43But in the end today, it looks like they just were not able to get that momentum at the polls.
01:50So the recalls started off as a civic-led movement, but the political parties were heavily involved later on.
01:57How are they responding to this?
01:59Well, the Kuomintang tonight, already several of those lawmakers facing recall came out thanking their supporters for helping them keep their roles
02:11and, you know, continuing their support a year, over a year after they were first elected.
02:17And this is a huge win for their party.
02:21They will not be able to face recall again for the rest of their terms.
02:27And their chair, Eric Zhu, also came out tonight.
