Legislative elections were held in Taiwan on 12 January 2008 to elect the members of the Legislative Yuan. It was the first Legislative Yuan election after the constitutional amendments of 2005, which extended term length from three to four years, reduced seat count from 225 to 113, and introduced the current electoral system.

Quick Facts All 113 seats in the Legislative Yuan 57 seats needed for a majority, Registered ...

2008 Taiwanese legislative election

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All 113 seats in the Legislative Yuan 57 seats needed for a majority
Registered	17,179,656[lower-alpha 1]
Turnout	58.50%[lower-alpha 2] 0.85 pp
Majority party Minority party   Leader Wu Po-hsiung Chen Shui-bian Party Kuomintang DPP Alliance Pan-Blue Pan-Green Last election 32.83%, 79 seats 35.72%, 89 seats Seats won 81 27 Seat change 2 62 Constituency vote 5,291,512 53.50% 3,775,352 38.17% Party vote 5,010,801 51.23% 3,610,106 36.91%   Third party Fourth party   Leader Lin Pin-kuan James Soong Party NPSU People First Alliance Pan-Blue Pan-Blue Last election 3.63%, 6 seats 13.90%, 34 seats Seats won 3 1 Seat change 3 34 Constituency vote 239,317 2.42% 28,254 0.29% Party vote 68,527 0.70% Did not stand
Vote share by constituencies
Election cartogram

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The results gave the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Pan-Blue Coalition a supermajority (86 of the 113 seats) in the legislature, handing a heavy defeat to then-President Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party, which won the remaining 27 seats only. The junior partner in the Pan-Green Coalition, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, won no seats.

Two transitional justice referendums, both of which failed to pass due to low turnout, were held at the same time.

For the first time in the history of Taiwan, most members of the Legislative Yuan were to be elected from single-member districts: 73 of the 113 members were chosen in such districts by the plurality voting system (first-past-the-post). Parallel to the single member constituencies (not compensating for disproportionality in single-member districts), 34 seats were elected in one national district by party-list proportional representation. For these seats, only political parties whose votes exceed a five percent threshold were eligible for the allocation. Six further seats were reserved for Taiwanese aborigines. Therefore, each elector had two ballots under parallel voting.

The aboriginal members were elected by single non-transferable vote in two 3-member constituencies for lowland aborigines and highland aborigines respectively. This did not fulfill the promise in the treaty-like document A New Partnership Between the Indigenous Peoples and the Government of Taiwan, where each of the 13 recognized indigenous peoples was to get at least one seat, and the distinction between highland and lowland abolished.

The breakdown by administrative unit was:^[2]

The delimitation of the single-member constituencies within the cities and counties was a major political issue, with bargaining between the government and the legislature. Of the 15 cities and counties to be partitioned (the ten others have only one seat), only seven of the districting schemes proposed by the CEC were approved in a normal way. The eight other schemes were decided by drawing lots: "Taipei and Taichung cities and Miaoli and Changhua counties will adopt the version suggested by the CEC, while Kaohsiung city will follow the consensus of the legislature. Taipei county will follow the proposal offered by the opposition Taiwan Solidarity Union, Taoyuan county will adopt the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's scheme, and Pingtung county will use the scheme agreed upon by the Non-partisan Solidarity Union, People First Party, Kuomintang and Taiwan Solidarity Union."^[3]

The elections were the first held under a new electoral system which had been approved by both major parties in constitutional amendments adopted in 2005, but which one political scientist has argued favored the KMT.^{[citation needed]} The rules are set up so that every county has at least one seat, which gave a higher representation for smaller counties in which the KMT traditionally has done well. Northern counties tend to be marginally in favor of KMT, whereas southern counties tend to be strongly for DPP, and the single member system limits this advantage. The partially led to the result that the legislative count was highly in favor of the KMT while the difference in the number of votes cast for the KMT and DPP were less dramatic.^[4]

It was considered possible that the 2008 Taiwanese presidential election would be held on the same day as this election, but this was eventually not the case, with the presidential happening 10 weeks later, in March. Two referendums were held on the same date.

With this election the KMT and the Pan-Blue Coalition have more than the two-thirds majority needed to propose a recall election of the President and if NPSU votes are counted with the pan-Blue coalition, more than the three-quarters majority needed to propose constitutional amendments.

The government of People's Republic of China, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan, remained largely silent on the election result. State media carried brief updates of results and passed no comment on either the referendum or the Kuomintang victory.^[7]

The government of China appointed 13 representatives for Taiwan to its own National People's Congress on the same day. These delegates are mostly descendants of Taiwanese who emigrated to the Mainland, or Communist supporters who fled Taiwan. Their positions are ceremonial as the PRC do not exercise effective jurisdiction over Taiwan.^[8]

• Seventh Legislative Yuan