These parts people care more about “their guy” than about ideology or partisanal politics. Their guys happened to be with the KMT.

It’s worth noting that even the DPP isn’t calling for an announcement of independence.

Because uncle Sam doesn’t like that. The last president who tried to make things go that way soured US - Taiwan relationship quite badly. Tsai and the DPP now play it safe by maintaining the status quo - don’t say the bad word that starts with i, and everybody’s happy, maybe except China.

Status quo = de facto independence. Is the current position of the ruling DPP.

For me it’s more like KMT -> unification, TPP -> ???(Ko is purposefully vague about this) and DPP -> states quo but further distance from China