Taiwan Same-Sex Marriage Referendum

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BACKGROUND

Taiwan voters went to the polls on 24 November 2018 to address their opinions of same-sex marriage. The question that appeared on the ballot was as below:

 National Referendum Proposition 10: Do you agree that marriage defined in the Civil Code should be restricted to the union between one man and one woman?

 The result shows Taiwan voters rejected the protection of same-sex marital right in the referendum which attracted extensive attention worldwide. After seeing this results, I am wondering what Taiwan voters asked for? What can people do for same-sex couples and LGBTs in Taiwan after this referendum?

ANALYSIS 

Tableau Dashboard: Taiwan Same-sex Marriage Referendum (2018)

Data

To find out the possible reasons behind the result, I collected data from multiple resources, including referendum result from Taiwan Central Election Commission,  number of population by age from Taiwan Department of Household Registration, and education level by city from National Statistics, ROC (Taiwan) 

Tools 

To complete the whole analysis, I downloaded data in Excel format and transformed the dataset into a tidy format via excel directly. Afterward, I imported 3 excel files into Tableau and started the analysis by integrating referendum result, city, age distribution, and education level using pie charts, bar charts, staked line graphs and a bubble chart with heatmap. You can find the interactive dashboard online at Tableau Public.

Findings

(I) Age Distribution in TW
Firstly, the age distributions across cities are no big difference in Taiwan. Most people think middle-aged and elder people are those who vote down same-sex marriage because people get an impression that elders usually are more conservative. However, we cannot find the supportive data that age is the key influencer on the same-sex marriage issue. In contrast, the result shows similar age distribution across cities can lead to different vote result which means there may be other factors affecting the referendum.
(II) Assent Rate vs. Education Level
Secondly, the trend of education level across cities is similar to the trend of the assent rate, especially similar to the trend of junior high school, senior high school, and the university. It is interesting to find out how similar they are. The highest assent rate happens in Taipei City where a high ratio of people is with university education level. On the other hand, lower assent rate happens in Taitung County where a lower ratio of people is with university education level. It is not saying higher education level is better but it seems like higher education level is more welcome for the change. 



(III) Assent Rate vs. City Size
Third, higher assent rate happens not only in the bigger cities like Taipei City and New Taipei City but also happens in the northern small cities like Hsinchu City, and Keelung City. For the middle and south of Taiwan, we can find bigger cities like Taichung City, Kaohsiung City and Tainan City, where voters are more agreeable to the same-sex marriage referendum.

INSPIRATIONS

Same-sex marriage referendum didn't get passed by Taiwan voters this time, but we still learned many things through the whole process. Based on the analysis above, the following are my inspirations regarding how to share the value better:
  • Start from the big cities. We can start sharing the value of Gender Equity Education Act from the cities like Taichung City and Kaohsiung City which are both big cities and people there are only 5% point less agreed on same-sex marriage than the Taipei City and New Taipei City.
  • Use simple words. Make the educational flyer easy to read which can be easily understood both by a student from elementary school and also by grandparents who are over 70 years old.
  • Strengthen the value of family. For people born before 1980 in Taiwan, usually, they highly respect the traditional value and one of the most impactful core value in Taiwan is the importance of family which is universal across the urban and the rural.
Once Taiwan voters who have no chance to know the value of same-sex marriage in their cities can be well educated throughout a better communication, Taiwan could become the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex unions as people are starting discussing the value of different kinds of love.