Michael Turton has posted about Why the DPP Lost the Election. I agree with much of his analysis, but I also think that the DPP's attempts to capture the middle have also contributed to their problems.

Taiwan and the US are similar politically in that the vote is pretty much split down the middle. The DPP has been following an outdated strategy used by Clinton and Blair in the 1990s to reposition leftist parties back in the mainstream. But what Karl Rove has realized is that without a true left and with parties split down the middle, the key is to energize your base.

The blues, who have lost two straight presidential elections, are energized with the emergence of a viable candidate. Ma energized them even further by threatening to resign as KMT Chairman if the KMT did poorly in Saturday's 3-in-1 elections.

The greens, however, are alienating, rather than mobilizing their base by their attempts to move to the center. Taiwanese nationalists feel let down by a party that fired them up with calls for a new constitution and a new name for the country and then turned around and told them to forget about it.
There's also a lively discussion of Michael's post over on Forumosa.