On January 16, Taiwan held its sixth presidential and eighth parliamentary plebiscite since political liberalization in the early 1990s. Tsai Ing-wen’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won an overwhelming victory, vaulting Tsai to the presidency and giving the opposition party its first parliamentary majority.

The rout wasn’t surprising. Pre-election polls showed deep dissatisfaction among voters. Many saw the election as an opportunity to punish the Nationalist Party (KMT). A fifth of KMT supporters stayed home, and young voters turned their backs on the party entirely. Twenty-somethings not only went to the polls at higher rates, they voted nine to one against the KMT.

The party’s dramatic loss is, in part, the upshot of recent developments. After recapturing the presidency in 2008, the KMT tried to kickstart the economy by hitching the island’s export sector to China, which continued to grow despite the global downturn. In 2010, Taiwan signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement with China and the two countries began to liberalize cross-straits trade. Capital outflows to the mainland grew rapidly and China overtook the US as Taiwan’s premier market.