As soon as the last ballots were cast in Saturday's elections for county chiefs, county councils and city and town mayors, pundits took to the airwaves declaring the polls a major mid-term defeat for the ruling Kuomintang.

According to these self-anointed political analysts, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party effectively bounced back from the devastating corruption scandals of former President Chen Shui-bian.

In the meantime, the pundits claimed the KMT bumbled its way through the campaign and blamed growing dissatisfaction with President Ma Ying-jeou for the KMT's losses.

The KMT indeed had its share of setbacks on Saturday.

But using the American “mid-term” concept to analyze the election results, the KMT actually performed quite well.

If the dismal state of Taiwan's economy in the wake of a major global economic slowdown is factored in, the KMT cannot be considered to have performed poorly in this mid-term voting.

While the shouting pundits always make for great TV entertainment, they once again have misconstrued a foreign concept and grafted it on to local politics.

In the United States, the catch-phrase “mid-term election” refers to voting conducted in “off-years” when there is no presidential election.

While mid-term elections encompass voting for governors, state legislatures and special elections, American observers more commonly associate “mid-terms” with congressional contests.

The conventional wisdom associated with US mid-term elections suggests they are referenda on the sitting president.

More often than not, the political party in control of the White House loses around 5 to 6 per cent of its seats in the House of Representatives, or about 25 to 30 representatives, along with three or four seats in the 100-member Senate.

In the most recent US mid-term elections, then-US President George W. Bush's Republicans lost 30 seats in the House and six senators.

That was considered about average in terms of mid-term results over the past few decades and actually not bad considering the growing unpopularity of the war in Iraq among American voters.

There have been times in recent decades when the American president's party has suffered major setbacks.

In 1974, after US President Richard Nixon was forced to resign amid the snowballing Watergate scandal, the Republicans lost 48 House seats and four Senate seats to the Democrats.

In 1994, when Democrat Bill Clinton was still fumbling as he was settling into his presidency, his Democrats lost 54 House seats and eight Senate seats.

Another oft-cited example of mid-term setbacks is 1966, when the increasing unpopularity of the Vietnam War dragged down then-US President Lyndon Johnson's Democrats, resulting in Republicans gaining 48 seats in the House and three in the Senate.

Looking at Saturday's polls from this perspective, the KMT lost only two of the 14 county chief and large city mayoralty positions.

Among those, the Hualien County commissioner's seat was taken by an independent who remains affiliated with the KMT and its “pan-blue” alliance.

Besides holding on to Yunlin, Chiayi and Pingtung counties, the DPP only managed to snatch away a single county from the KMT in Yilan.

That is hardly a major setback comparable to the U.S. mid-terms of 1966, 1974 or 1994.

In terms of voting percentages, the DPP garnered 45.32 percent of the county chief and large-city mayor votes, nearly a six percent increase from four years ago.

That six percent loss would compare to an average mid-term bleed for an American governing party, although the increase in votes did not translate into six percent more seats for the DPP.

The DPP did not come nearly as close to scoring big in voting for 592 city and county council seats, where the KMT garnered 43.94 per cent of votes and the DPP took only 24.42 per cent.

The rest was shared by smaller parties and independents who often win local elections no matter which party is in power.

The KMT ended the day with 289 of these seats, while the DPP got only 128.

The voting for 211 small town mayors was even more lopsided in favor of the KMT, with the ruling party garnering 48.82 per cent of the vote and 121 mayoralties, and the DPP winning 20.04 per cent to take just 34 of them and the remainder going to independents.

These results hardly point to a huge American-style setback for the KMT in mid-term elections.

As has been true in the past, the KMT remains the largest single force in Taiwan's local politics, although rivals from the DPP, along with traditional local factions and clans, are continuing to make small gains.

The KMT's new policy of refusing to nominate candidates with criminal convictions, such as the maverick Fu Kun-chi who went on to win the Hualien County commissionership as an independent, obviously had a larger impact on the results than public disappointment with President Ma's performance.