Following the 2012 presidential elections, the DPP seems to stand at a crossroads. Facing intensifying interaction across the Taiwan Strait and a majority of voters who want to see stable cross-strait relations, its history and identity as Taiwan’s oldest independence party seems to have become a burden for electoral success. Arguably, most Taiwanese can now at least live with the ‘1992 consensus’ of “one China with different interpretations”. It is hence stated by a number of party leaders and advisors that the DPP must modify its China approach to accommodate the ‘1992 consensus’ and the ‘One China principle’. Others reject this and instead plead for a rebuilding of the party from the grassroots, reactivating its links with civil society and rejuvenating the DPP’s democratic values. This article reconstructs the DPP’s China policy since the change in ruling parties in 2008. It argues that the DPP “learned little” from its defeat in that year and mainly conducted strategic maneuvering in the run-up to the 2012 elections to neutralize Ma Ying-jeou’s pro-active China policy. The article then focuses on the current debate in the DPP on the necessary consequences of the 2012 election outcome for the party’s China policy, demarcating the space for an alternative approach and pondering if there might be a new ‘pragmatist consensus’ rising in the party leadership.

We assess the retrospective and prospective economic survey questions by empirically examining the 1996 to 2008 TEDS presidential election surveys. We discuss which question is more appropriate in determining economic voting. Because the social economic assessment questions specify a time frame, they generate the validity problem when asked after the elected president has taken office. This problem is particularly severe for retrospective economic assessment. It induces respondents to compare the economic conditions of two consecutive presidential terms rather than the economic conditions one year before the election. In addition, because respondents already know those who have been elected, their answers are more likely to be influenced by partisan or candidate preferences, resulting in the problem of endogeneity. By contrast, the questions regarding the predecessor’s and the candidates’ handling of the economy do not specify a time frame. The validity problems are less severe. In actual fact, we demonstrate that the endogeneity problem goes with each set of economic assessment questions. To better examine the effect of economic assessment on vote choice, it is necessary to address the endogeneity problem. Without further information, researchers should at least control party identification and candidate image.