Russia underestimated Ukraine’s willingness to fight in 2022. This was in part due to public opinion polls that were conducted covertly for Russian intelligence, which misled Moscow to believe that Ukrainians would not resist invasion. Four years later, what Moscow expected to be a swift, 10-day victory has devolved into a protracted war.
China is at risk of the same thing in its pursuit of unification with Taiwan. The state-run Global Times published an editorial on Wednesday under the garbled title: “Taiwan compatriots recognize ‘independence’ pursuit only turns themselves into cannon fodder: mainland spokesperson on poll showing 60% Taiwan people unwilling to go to battlefield.”
The poll that the Global Times references could be one of several that are regularly conducted in Taiwan. One such poll, which was published last fall by My Formosa, an online magazine, found that only 40.8% of respondents agree with the proposition that “each of us should pay any price, including sacrificing our lives, to protect Taiwan’s sovereignty.” This poll was previously covered by the South China Morning Post in an article titled, “Taiwanese increasingly reluctant to give their lives to defend island.”
Other polls have yielded different results. One that was recently published by the Institute for National Defense and Security Research reported the inverse: 60% of respondents said that they were “willing” or “very willing” to fight for Taiwan in the event of a Chinese military invasion.
Which poll is more accurate? Paul Huang (黃柏彰), a research fellow at the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation, is skeptical of all of them. “They are trash, that’s it,” Huang said. “There are 23 million-something Taiwanese. 95% of them are realistically not in a position to fight,” he said. “It’s like you’re trying to poll an election, and 95% of your samples are in high school or middle school.” Without formal ties to the military, respondents may have varying frames of reference, Huang added. “You don’t know what was actually going through their mind when they gave you these answers.”
Still, the civilian population having a “willingness to fight,” whatever that might mean for specific individuals, is important. “Not everybody can take up arms and fight in a battlefield, but I think this is a war of necessity. Taiwan is a really small island, so if you don’t resist, you know, you’re not gonna be pushed away to the Pacific,” said Charles Wu (吳冠昇), a professor at the University of South Alabama and an expert on the influence of public opinion on military operations. “People will fight in a way that they can.”
But hypothetical conflict polling is difficult to get right. “[P]eacetime respondents systematically underestimate how extreme situations affect choices — panic, family obligations, evacuation routes, fear, leadership cues and peer behavior,” Wen Liu (劉文), an expert on Taiwanese civil defense mobilization and threat perception, wrote in an email to Domino Theory. “People’s answers often reflect: ‘Do I think war is likely?’ and ‘Do I think resistance is possible and meaningful?’ as much as personal courage. When they perceive that the war is more likely and there is a greater chance of winning, their willingness should be higher.”
The failure of polling to accurately reflect Ukraine’s real-world willingness to fight shows how these dynamics can play out, and even affect the trajectory of a conflict. Branislav Slantchev, a professor of war studies at the University of California San Diego, recalled how Moscow covertly ran public opinion polls in Ukraine prior to the 2022 invasion, asking questions such as, how willing are you to pick up arms to defend the country? And would you consider the Russians invaders or liberators? The responses showed that while Ukrainians would not welcome a Russian invasion, most wouldn’t be willing to fight. It is clear now that this hypothetical polling has not aligned with reality.
Perverse bureaucratic incentives might have led to this intelligence failure. In Russia’s government, like in China’s, there exists a corrupt upper echelon that encourages the delivery of news that supports their goals, Slantchev said.
Another reason for the intelligence failure is that “nobody imagined that the Russians would invade the way they did. Ukrainians just did not believe it, and so they didn’t see a need to defend anything,” Slantchev said.
In Taiwan, one recent poll suggests an even split among the population on whether they think war with China is likely in the next five years, while another recent poll suggests that a moderate majority believes war is unlikely in that timeframe. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supporters are less likely to think China would attack. They are also less likely to express a willingness to defend Taiwan.
Threat perception can be mitigated as a confounding factor if “willingness to fight” is grounded in a specific context. “If the alternative that I imagine [to fighting], for some reason, is some peaceful coexistence with China, like hell no, I’m not gonna fight. If the alternative is my house is being bombed, yeah, I want to go and land the defense units to shoot down drones,” Slantchev said. “‘Willingness to fight’ by itself is meaningless without the context.”
But even if the appropriate context is provided, polling results might not accurately predict the reaction of a population to invasion. When the World Values Survey measured “willingness to fight for your country” during active war in 2019, only 56.9% of respondents answered “yes” in Ukraine. For comparison, 77% of respondents in Taiwan answered “yes.”
Wu says that instead of putting too much weight on any one number, we should look at the underlying factors that influence these polls. In Taiwan, the biggest factor influencing “willingness to fight” is perceived U.S. support. According to polling that Wu conducted, when given the context that Taiwan had U.S. support against a Chinese invasion, the percentage of respondents who expressed willingness to fight was seven points higher than in a scenario without U.S. support. This dynamic played out in the real world after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. When the U.S. failed to send ground troops to support Ukraine, war support in Taiwan dropped about 25%, Wu said. Interestingly, the perceived support or lack of support from the U.S. impacts the willingness to fight of KMT supporters more than it does DPP supporters.
In a real wartime scenario, perhaps the lack of immediate U.S. support wouldn’t deter Taiwan from defending itself, just like it didn’t deter Ukraine in those first few weeks. But if the goal is to prevent China from attacking Taiwan in the first place, let Ukraine be a lesson in the role these polls can play in signalling to an adversary whether victory is achievable. American messaging could ultimately impact China’s expectations for the kind of fight Taiwan will put up.
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