See also Part 1 (Intro); Part 2 (Big Six); Part 3 (North and Central); Part 5 (Summing Up); and Preview from 2022.  

Chiayi City - 嘉義市

KMT: Nominated Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷), a TPP member, as the joint KMT-TPP candidate on May 4. 

DPP: Nominated incumbent legislator Wang Mei-hui (王美惠) on October 22, 2025.  

Others: TBD

T-PVI: G+4

Notes:

• Wang Mei-hui has been Chiayi City's legislator since 2020. She beat the previous DPP incumbent Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) in a party primary in 2019, and won with a little over 50% of the vote in both 2020 and 2024. Before becoming a legislator she was a city councilor (2005-2020). She's probably the strongest candidate the DPP could run here. 
• The TPP and KMT held a joint polling primary from April 2-4, and the former TPP at-large legislator Chang Chi-kai came out on top. Chang is the only TPP mayoral nominee to win the joint nomination of the KMT (Kao Hung-an is now an independent). 
• Chang is a long-time reporter and media personality who joined the TPP in 2023. He was listed 8th on the party list, and because the TPP did so well in the party vote he ended up in the LY as an at-large legislator for two years. He's clearly in the blue camp; he worked for blue-leaning media TVBS and CtiTV, and in 2010 joined Eric Chu's New Taipei election team. But he's not a career politician. 
• Popular incumbent KMT mayor Huang Min-hui (黃敏惠) (not to be confused with Wang Mei-hui the legislator) is term-limited out, and the KMT has a limited bench here to try to replace her. For the joint polling primary the party nominated Weng Shou-liang (翁壽良), a physician without much of a public profile. 

Polls: 

• TVBS survey from April 24-30, 2025, finds Wang leading Chang 43-37%. 

Rating: Leans DPP. Wang is a strong candidate: she's effectively an incumbent since her legislative district is coterminous with Chiayi City. Chang is a bit unorthodox but has the benefit of a unified blue-white coalition behind him, and Wang's initial polling numbers aren't strong enough to predict a blowout here. But Chiayi is green-leaning, and the KMT has won it in the past only because Huang Min-hui's family is so politically influential. Huang's endorsement of Chang and participation in the campaign might make this more competitive; that same TVBS survey reports that Mayor Huang has 70%+ approval ratings, but only 40% of Huang's supporters would back the TPP's Chang. 

Chiayi County 嘉義縣

KMT: No nominee; backing an independent candidate, Wu Pin-jui (吳品叡), the incumbent mayor of Puzi City. 

DPP: Nominated Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘), incumbent legislator in Chiayi District 1. 

Others: The TPP is also backing Wu. 

T-PVI: G+7 

Notes: 

• Incumbent DPP mayor Weng Chang-liang (翁章梁) is term-limited out. He's consistently ranked as one of the most popular local mayors and might be destined for a cabinet position in the Lai government after he completes his term. He's chairing Tsai's election campaign committee and throwing his organizational weight behind the DPP nominee.
• Tsai won the party's polling primary in January with what was reported as a 25+ point lead over anyone the KMT could field. He defeated county councilor Huang Jung-li (黃榮利) for the nomination.
• Tsai has racked up comfortable wins since his initial election to the legislature in 2016, although he ran several points behind the DPP ticket in 2016 and 2020. 
• This is the first time in KMT history that it has not run its own candidate in Chiayi County. The party center ultimately decided to back Wu instead, sparking some grumbling from KMT grassroots members that the party was giving up on an organizational presence in the county. 
• The KMT has not been competitive here since Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) defected to the DPP in 2001 and brought his faction (the Lin faction 林派) into the green camp -- his son, Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷), now holds the Chiayi County 2 LY seat. Tsai is referred to in news sources as a DPP "party loyalist" and not part of the Lin faction, although he has Weng's backing, and Weng was on the Lin faction side of a bitter dispute between Chen Ming-wen and the previous DPP magistrate Chang Hua-kuan (張花冠) in 2018.  
• Tsai was initially reluctant to run after the KMT backed her, and she took a few weeks to declare her candidacy. She announced on July 5 and was joined on stage by KMT at-large Legislator and 2022 nominee Wang Yu-min (王育敏 Alicia Wang), the incumbent Chiayi City Mayor Huang Min-hui, and TPP's Chiayi City nominee Chang Chi-kai. 

Polling:

• TBD - nothing since the DPP polling primary in January. 

Rating: Likely DPP. Chiayi County is second only to Tainan as the greenest locality in Taiwan. The KMT hasn't outright won the county mayor's race since 1993. So this is a good place to embrace an "Opposition Grand Alliance" (在野大聯盟), as they've branded the effort. Still, given the historic patterns and Chiayi County's deep green shade, it would be a monumental upset for Wu Pin-jui  to prevail here.  

Yunlin 雲林縣

KMT: Nominated at-large legislator Chang Chia-jun (張嘉郡) ) on February 6, 2026.  

DPP: Nominated incumbent legislator Liu Chien-kuo (劉建國) in November 2025. 

Others: TBD

T-PVI: G+4

Notes: 

• I'm going to reuse some material from the 2022 preview since the matchup is very similar...
• Incumbent mayor Chang Li-shan (張麗善) is term-limited out. Chang Chia-jun is her niece and the daughter of Chang Jung-wei (張榮味). That makes her the leading light of the next generation of the Chang family, the most powerful political family in Yunlin. Chang Jung-wei (張榮味) won two terms as Yunlin County magistrate, in 1999 and 2001. He was convicted of vote-buying in the 1994 county council council election, but only exhausted his court appeals in 2005 and was removed from office then. He was later sentenced to prison for accepting bribes in a case related to the construction of the Mailiao incinerator plant, and was in prison from July 2018 to May 2021. The Chang family has maintained considerable influence in Yunlin through local agricultural cooperative associations. 
• Factional politics in Yunlin are complicated, and to add to the confusion, everyone seems to be named Chang (張). The Chang Jung-wei faction which Chang Chia-jun comes from has sometimes been allied with the KMT, and sometimes independent. Even members of Chang Jung-wei's family have sometimes fought against one another in elections here. 
• Chang Chia-jun studied in the UK (degrees from UCL and Southampton Univ) and then got an early start in electoral politics: she was elected to the LY in 2008 when she was only 27. She was then district legislator from Yunlin 1 from 2008-2016, did not run for reelection in 2016, ran but lost to incumbent Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬) in 2020, then rejoined the LY on the party list in 2024. 
• Liu Chien-kuo is a long-time legislator from Yunlin's 2nd District. Liu got his start on the Yunlin County Council, first winning a seat in 2002. He gained national attention in 2008 when he ran for the legislature in Yunlin 2, lost, then accused his opponent Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) of the KMT of vote-buying. Chang lost the case and was stripped of his seat in 2009, and Liu won the by-election to replace him. He's represented Yunlin 2 ever since. He's not named Chang so he's got that going for himself at least.
• Liu was also the nominee in 2022, and lost narrowly (by about 40k votes) after getting a late start on the campaign. The DPP has been determined to give him a better shot this time and decided on his renomination by November 2025.

Polls: 

• 2026.3.23-28. BigMedia News group poll conducted by Pearson Data found Chang at 49.5%, Liu at 39%. 

Rating: leans KMT. Chang is well-positioned to carry on the family legacy in Yunlin. She's got significant electoral experience and the full backing of her family's political networks, including the support of her aunt, the outgoing (and popular) incumbent. Liu is a solid candidate for the DPP and has a political base in the inland areas that his constituency covers, but needs to build a stronger campaign organization in the coastal areas of Yunlin 1 that Chang used to represent. Yunlin leans green at the national level but factional politics here are still usually decisive.  

Pingtung 屏東縣

KMT: Nominated Su Ching-chuan (蘇清泉), the party's 2022 nominee. 

DPP: Renominated incumbent mayor Chou Chun-mi (周春米) on February 4. 

Others: TBD. 

T-PVI: G+6 

Notes: 

• This race is a rematch of 2022. Then, Su nearly pulled off a big upset, ultimately losing only 49-47% (~11,000 votes). He was pretty salty about it, too, and tried to challenge the results. This is Su's third try at the mayor's office, and this time around he is focused on Pingtung's low GDP/capita and claimed economic stagnation -- it's a mostly agricultural county that is not connected to the HSR system on the west coast, so it's been left out of the high-tech boom. 
• Chou won a three-way contest for the party primary in 2022, and barely held on in the fall election, so she's not a shoo-in. But her approval numbers are now pretty good, and it's always hard to beat an incumbent mayor where the partisan lean already favors them, absent a national wave.
• Pingtung has been trending a bit away from the DPP over the last couple election cycles, and there are some scattered signs of shakiness at the local level: party-backed candidates lost two township mayor by-elections in July 2025 and January 2026. Under Chou's watch Pingtung has also suffered from a couple of public-safety incidents -- the Ming Yang factor fire and the Antai Hospital fire (though that hospital was founded by Su, so it cuts both ways). 
• Unlike 2022, when the NPP ran a candidate who took 4% of the vote, there's no third party candidate so far. That probably favors Chou, and it's a good sign that the factional battles of the previous election are behind her for now. 

Polls: 

• The polls were notoriously off here in 2022; they badly underestimated Su's vote share, in some cases by 20 points or more. Treat all polls with some skepticism these days, but especially here given that it's the same two opponents again, and Pingtung may just be especially hard to poll. 
• That said, no polls from reputable sources yet. 

Rating: leans DPP. Under normal conditions I'd predict a popular DPP mayor running for reelection in a green-leaning county would be a likely win. But the 2022 result should give some pause. 

Hualien 花蓮縣

KMT: Nominated Yu Shu-chen (游淑貞) on March 4.

DPP: No nominee; may back an independent.

Others: Chang Chun (張峻), Wei Chia-hsien (魏嘉賢). 

T-PVI: B+18

Notes: 

• The story here has to start with Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁), Hualien's current legislator. The incumbent mayor Hsu Chen-wei (徐榛蔚) is the wife of Fu, and took over after he was convicted on final appeal of insider stock trading and forced to leave office in 2018. She got appointed in his place -- they divorced to get around Taiwan's anti-nepotism law, then remarried -- is finishing her second term this year and cannot run again, ending, for now, what The Reporter (報導者) calls the "Fu family dynasty." Since Fu first won the Hualien magistracy in 2009, he and Hsu Chen-wei have together held the office for four terms spanning nearly 17 years, a record. Fu himself has served a prison term, rejoined the KMT, gotten elected to the LY, and become the KMT's legislative caucus whip where he's now a major (and deeply problematic) political force.
• The Fu clan has publicly supported Ji'an township head Yu Shu-chen (游淑貞) for the nomination. Yu won the KMT's internal polling primary in January and was duly nominated by party center on March 4. 
• HOWEVA, two other pan-blue figures are challenging her outside the party nomination process. County council speaker Chang Chun (張峻) left the KMT after being denied the speaker nomination under the party's "anti-black-gold clause" (he had a previous vote-buying conviction overturned on appeal) and is running as an independent. He's been joined by county councilor Wei Chia-hsien (魏嘉賢), also formerly KMT but expelled after defying party orders and running for a council seat four years ago. 
• The DPP hasn't nominated a candidate here, and it appears to be leaning towards backing Chang since he actively supported the recall election in Hualien last year. But according to polling from multiple outlets, Wei probably has the broader appeal and is the stronger candidate against Yu. 

Polls: 

• 2026.3.18-20. My Formosa poll pits each of the independents against Yu, finds Wei ahead of Yu 35-31%, but Chang behind 28-44%. 
• 2026.7.21-23. TVBS article citing a Storm Media poll, finds a three way race: Yu in the lead with 30%, Wei with 22%, Chang with 12.5%. 

Rating: leans KMT. I did not expect to find such an interesting race here. Fu Kun-chi has dominated the county government for most of the last two decades, but it's not self-evident he can transfer his influence to a newcomer. A lot depends on who the DPP ultimately decides to back; do they go for principle or pragmatism? If it's Wei they ultimately end up supporting, then this could well be a toss-up. 

Taitung 台東縣

KMT: Nominated Wu Hsiu-hua (吳秀華) on December 24, 2025

DPP: Nominated indigenous Lowlands legislator Chen Ying (陳瑩) on October 22, 2025.

Others: none so far; former DPP legislator Liu Chao-hao publicly bowed out on July 31. 

T-PVI: B+16 

Notes: 

• The incumbent, Yao Ching-ling (饒慶鈴 sometimes spelled Rao instead of Yao), is term-limited out, so this is another open seat the KMT is defending. 
• Wu is the incumbent county council speaker. She's the sister of former magistrate candidate Wu Chun-li (吳俊立), who took office in 2005 and then was immediately suspended for being convicted of a corruption charge. He tried to divorce and then appoint his wife as his replacement, but the MoI ruled that move illegal and appointed a replacement instead. His ex-wife Kuang Li-chen (鄺麗貞) then won the by-election for the office in 2006, and served one term. Just within the past year, Wu Chun-li is in fresh legal trouble for a stock manipulation case.
• Wu Hsiu-hua has her own corruption rumors; she's been linked to a road-widening scandal that Taitung prosecutors are investigating. (County council speakers often have a lot of influence over local public works decisions). 
• Chen Ying is a strong candidate for the DPP in a race it's never won before. She has been one of three lowlands indigenous representatives in the legislature since winning in 2016 in an upset, and she's the first DPP member ever to win one of the reserved indigenous seats. About 25% of the electorate in Taitung is indigenous, so that background helps her chances. More important, her father Chen Chien-nien (陳建年) was Taitung County magistrate from 1993-2001 as a KMT member, and he was the first person with indigenous status ever to serve as city or county executive. His old networks have helped sustain Chen Ying's political career. (On the less positive side, he also was convicted of vote-buying during Chen Ying's first run for the LY in 2004). 
• The DPP faced a coordination challenge here when Liu Chao-hao, the former DPP legislator from Taitung (2016-2024), indicated he wanted to run for county magistrate again. That would have been the fifth (!) time he's tried for that office; he lost the other four attempts. There was a concerted effort by party heavyweights to get him to drop out of the race, apparently involving key southern DPP power-brokers Chen Ming-wen and Chuang Jui-hsiang; Liu finally announced on July 31 that he would not run. Tsai Ing-wen herself then came to Taitung to seal the deal and appear with both Chen and Liu in a demonstration of party unity. 

Polls: 

• 2026.5.27-28. CNEWS poll reports two results:
• Three-way scenario: Wu Hsiu-hua 44.2%, Chen Ying 15.0%, Liu Chao-hao 13.4%, undecided 27.4%
• Two-way scenario: Wu Hsiu-hua 51.3%, Chen Ying 22.4%, undecided 26.3%

Rating: Leans KMT. Start with the fact that Taitung is very blue -- Hou Yu-ih won 50% of the vote here in 2024, compared to 33.5% nation-wide -- and add the fact that a DPP candidate has never won the county executive election. That makes any KMT nominee the strong favorite in a two-way race.

But there are some glimmers of hope for the DPP nonetheless. For one, the partisan divides that seem so fierce to observers in Taipei are far shallower in Taitung. The current magistrate, Rao Ching-ling, is an "old friend" of Chen Ying and has had warm things to say about her, despite their different party affiliations. And Chen Ying and Wu Hsiu-hua aren't exactly enemies, either. Politics within indigenous communities are also complex, and Chen Ying's demonstrated ability to win over indigenous voters who are normally hostile to the DPP is a real asset. The DPP has also done surprisingly well here in the LY races recently, thanks to Liu Chao-hao's over-performance (although the Taitung LY district excludes indigenous voters).

Wu has some family baggage and a brewing corruption scandal of her own. All in all, it's probably not enough to deny her a win. Probably. 

Penghu 澎湖縣

KMT: Nominated Huxi Township head Chen Chen-chung (陳振中) in April 2026. 

DPP: Renominated Chen Kuang-fu (陳光復); drafted his wife Wu Shu-chin (吳淑瑾) to replace him on June 17. 

Others: Former Magong mayor Yeh Chu-lin (葉竹林) is again running as an independent.

T-PVI: B+2

Notes: 

• Incumbent DPP mayor Chen Kuang-fu had a fall on February 17, 2026, suffering a hemorrhage and falling into a coma. He's been in intensive care ever since. He had already gotten the DPP's nod for reelection, but given his condition, the party drafted his wife Wu Shu-chin (吳淑瑾) to run in his place. (If you haven't figured out by now, politics is a family affair in Taiwan.) 
• Chen is the only DPP member ever to win the mayor's office in Penghu; he first won in 2014, then was defeated in 2018, then snuck back into office in 2022 when two KMT candidates split the pan-blue vote. The Penghu legislator is a 4-term DPP member, Yang Yao (楊曜), but he's repeatedly turned down entreaties to run for mayor. Other than those two, Penghu has historically voted pretty blue. 
• With Chen incapacitated, the DPP scrambled to find a substitute, cycling through several options before settling on Wu as the path of least resistance. 
• The KMT had its act together better this time, naming Hu-hsi Township head Chen Chen-chung (陳振中) as its nominee. The problem for them is that Yeh Chu-lin is also running again. He's a former KMT member and mayor of Magong, the largest city in Penghu, who in 2022 registered for the election on the last possible day and then got enough of the pan-blue vote to throw the election to Chen -- the final split was 36-33-30%. That could happen again this year.

Polls: 

• 2026.7.14-8.3 ETToday poll has Chen in the lead, 30% to Wu's 21% and Yeh's 18%. 

Rating: Toss-up. It's too hard to know just yet how this three-way race will shake out, especially given Wu's late entry into the campaign. There might be a sympathy vote for her husband. Yeh might stay competitive, or end up abandoned by voters if he's clearly in third place.  

Kinmen 金門縣

KMT: Formally nominated incumbent legislator Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍). 

DPP: No nominee. 

Others: Former mayor Yang Chen-wu (楊鎮浯) is running without the KMT nomination, as is current deputy mayor Li Wen-liang (李文良).

T-PVI: B+32 

Notes: 

• So here's where the three-cornered races (三腳督) are hiding this cycle! Where the DPP is too weak to field a competitive candidate, things get old-school -- the patterns here (and in Hualien) look a lot like the pre-1990s era elsewhere in Taiwan. 
• The incumbent mayor Chen Fu-hai would have been eligible for re-election...except that he's not because of an amendment to the Elections and Recall Act passed in 2023 (the so-called anti-black gold clause 排黑條款) that permanently bars anyone convicted of taking bribes from holding elected office -- and he has an old conviction from the 1990s. He's attempted to pass the torch to the next generation by supporting his son, Chen Chi-hsiang (陳麒翔), for county council. 
• The KMT party center nominated Kinmen legislator Chen Yu-jen, who has already deferred running for this office twice before. She's vowed not to yield the nomination again. 
• Former incumbent Yang Chen-wu (楊鎮浯) lost the nomination procedure but is running anyway, in fine Kinmen tradition. He has a rival with Chen Yu-jen that got more personal in the 2024 legislative election, when he refused to support her reelection and endorsed a TPP challenger. He also is a rival of Chen Fu-hai, who he beat by 800 votes in 2018, then was defeated by in 2022. 
• Deputy mayor Li Wen-liang (李文良) has also declared he's running, and has gotten support from Chen Chi-hsiang.
• The DPP has considered parachuting in a candidate here -- current at-large Legislator Chen Pei-yu (陳培瑜) is one name floated in some sources -- but still hasn't nominated anyone. 

Rating: Safe KMT. The only question is which KMT candidate will win this Battle Royale. 

Lienchiang County 連江縣

KMT: Nominated incumbent mayor Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) on June 8, 2026. 

DPP: No nominee. 

Others: KMT member Tsao Erh-yuan (曹爾元) is running an independent campaign again, like in 2022. 

T-PVI: B+33 

Notes: 

• Mayor Wang has the party center's nod since he's an incumbent eligible for re-election. This race will be a rematch of 2022, when Wang won 51-42% over Tsao.
• In 2022, the DPP member Lii Wen made a valiant attempt to build the DPP's appeal here by running a no-hope campaign for mayor; he got 7% of the vote. With that as the last data point, it's going to be hard to convince anybody else to run on the DPP label here.

Rating: Safe KMT. Two candidates running, both will keep the local government in KMT hands. 

See also Part 1 (Intro); Part 2 (Big Six); Part 3 (North and Central); Part 5 (Summing Up)

See also Part 1 (Intro); Part 2 (Big Six); Part 4 (South, East, and Offshore Islands); Part 5 (Summing Up); Preview from 2022.  

Keelung 基隆市

KMT: Renominated incumbent mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑)

DPP: Nominated Tung Tzu-wei (童子瑋) on Dec 31, 2025. 

Others: TBD

T-PVI: B+6

Notes: 

• Incumbent Hsieh Kuo-liang easily survived a recall attempt in October 2024: no beat yes, 55-45%, and the yes votes fell about 8k votes short of the 25% threshold. The recall was supposedly organized because Mayor Hsieh had ordered police to break into a retail property whose owners were contesting an order to vacate, before a court had ruled on the dispute. Recall organizers also claimed a larger set of grievances: mismanaged spending, broken campaign promises, opaque no-bid contracts, and new busses breaking down. Hsieh has also had fairly low approval ratings for much of his first term. But apparently not low enough to be recalled...
• The Keelung recall vote was a preview of the Great Recall elections of 2025, when all the KMT legislators facing recalls also won. Like in 2025, the signature-gathering drive was launched by a civil society group, and DPP figures including the former DPP mayor Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) and current Taipei mayor nominee Puma Shen joined campaigners on stage to support recalling Hsieh.     
• Hsieh comes from a prominent and wealthy political family in Keelung. His grandfather (謝清雲) founded the Keelung Second Credit Cooperative in the 1950s, then was a Taiwan Provincial Assembly member and ran in (but lost) the Keelung mayor's race in 1964 -- as a KMT member! -- to an independent candidate. His father Hsieh Hsiu-ping (謝修平) inherited the family business and also served as a Provincial Assembly member before becoming Keelung City Council Speaker and later serving as a National Assembly member from 1991-96. He sought the Keelung mayor's office in 1997 but was forced aside by the party center as it faced a stiff challenge from the DPP.
• Hsieh Kuo-liang holds multiple degrees from U.S. universities -- a BA from USC and an MS from MIT -- and speaks excellent English. He also has an LLM from NCCU in Taipei. He eventually followed in the family footsteps and entered politics, winning an LY seat in 2004 on the PFP label, then winning reelection in 2008 and 2012 as the sole legislator from Keelung. He either chose or was forced not to run in 2016 when Hau Lung-pin (郝龍斌) wanted to parachute into what he thought was a safe blue Keelung LY seat (which Hau then lost in an embarrassing upset.) Hsieh ran the family business for a few years before making his comeback in 2022 and is the first of the Hsieh clan to actually become mayor. 
• Tung Tzu-wei is a two-term Keelung city councilor who was elected council speaker in 2022, when he was only 36 years old. He's also from a political family: his grandfather is Tung Yung (童永), a policy advisor to both Tsai Ing-wen and Lai Ching-te, and President Lai is his father's cousin. Tung was the top vote-getter in his multi-member council district in both 2018 and 2022, so he's got some proven electoral appeal. This is the right kind of candidate profile for the DPP to be competitive in a blue-leaning city like Keelung. 

Polls: 

• 7.24-27: A Mirror Media poll finds a close race: Hsieh leads Tung 38.5-36%. Tung leads among respondents under 50. 

Rating: leans KMT. Hsieh is an incumbent running for re-election in a blue-leaning city, and that should be enough for him to win. But the recall challenge, his low public approval ratings, and a spirited DPP challenger with local roots suggest this could be competitive. This race is worth keeping an eye on for a DPP upset. 

Yilan 宜蘭縣

KMT: Nominated Wu Tsung-hsien (吳宗憲) on May 4 after he won the KMT-TPP polling primary. 

DPP: Nominated Lin Kuo-chang (林國漳) on October 25, 2025. 

Others: TBD. 

T-PVI: G+5

Notes: 

• Lin is a political newcomer (素人) but also a lawyer who's practiced in Yilan for 30 years, so he has deep local roots (在地深耕). He was personally recruited to run here by President Lai (in his concurrent role as DPP chairman). The DPP has suffered from factional infighting in the two previous election cycles, and that's allowed the KMT's Lin Zi-miao (林姿妙) to prevail twice in a green-leaning county. Lin's nomination here has apparently papered over these differences enough that Yilan DPP office-holders have publicly lined up behind him and he's seen as the clear favorite. 
• The KMT incumbent Mayor Lin was convicted of corruption charges and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment; she is now suspended and her deputy is running the county. That messed up the KMT's succession plans here: Lin's daughter, Lin Yi-ling, has declined to run as has the county council speaker Chang Sheng-te. The KMT ended up parachuting in (空降) Wu Tsung-hsien (吳宗憲), who has no previous ties to Yilan. 
• Wu is a former prosecutor with 20 years experience who worked in Taoyuan, Shilin, and Nantou. He joined Hou You-yi's administration in New Taipei in 2020, then in 2024 was placed high enough on the KMT legislative party list  to win a seat. He's been in the LY since then. 
• Wu was able to dodge a bullet when the TPP-KMT joint primary poll put him on top of former TPP legislator and Yilan party chapter head Chen Wan-hui (陳琬惠). She ran a third-party campaign here in 2022, but has agreed to respect the results of the poll and back Wu. This is yet another case where the KMT has ended up a big beneficiary of their pre-electoral coalition deal with the TPP, while the TPP has nothing to show for it. 

Polls: 

• 3.16-18. My Formosa with a high-quality poll showing Lin leading Wu 36-33%, before Wu was formally nominated. 

Rating: leans DPP. Lin seems to be the right kind of candidate for Yilan: deep local roots, no ties to any of the various DPP groups feuding with each other, and has the backing of the party center. Wu has a clean reputation -- a nice contrast with the last KMT mayor -- but has no local ties and no experience running for office. Absent a major national headwind, Yilan's traditional green lean should be enough for Lin to prevail over a weak opponent. 

Hsinchu City 新竹市

IND: Incumbent Mayor Kao Hung-an (高虹安) is now an independent running for reelection; she was a TPP member until she was charged with embezzlement and expelled from the party. 

KMT: The KMT decided in December not to field a candidate to challenge Kao.

DPP: Nominated Chuang Ching-cheng (莊競程) on April 15.

Others: Former KMT party spokesman Ho Chih-yung (何志勇) announced on Nov 11, 2025 he would run and has not backed down in the face of KMT pressure. 

T-PVI: B+4

Notes: 

• Kao is really living a charmed political life. First she won her appeal against charges that she had embezzled funds for assistant salaries. The appeals court didn't absolve her of misbehavior but reduced her sentence to a minor violation and a fine, which reinstated her as mayor and made her eligible to run for re-election. Then she avoided a KMT challenger when the party decided to treat her like the TPP member she used to be. Now she's got the tacit support of both pan-blue parties despite being suspended as mayor for much of her first term, and running as an independent for her second.  
• Forgoing a challenge to Kao in Hsinchu is the single biggest concession the KMT has made to honor their pre-electoral pact with the TPP -- and it's benefitting a candidate who isn't even a TPP member anymore. 
• Chuang Ching-cheng is a former legislator who served one term representing Taichung's 5th District, from 2020-2024. In what's becoming a bit of a pattern for the DPP, after he lost re-election, he joined the Lai administration, then was nominated for the Hsinchu race. He is a parachute candidate without any obvious connection to Hsinchu. One reason he was nominated appears to be his educational background in biomedical engineering -- perhaps a plus given Hsinchu's highly educated electorate. 
• Ho's intention to run complicates things for Kao, but he's a long-shot candidate. He's a political science professor (PhD UC Santa Barbara) who previously led the KMT's party cadre training center but has never run for office before. He might pick up some protest votes, but enough to play spoiler? Probably not. 

Polls: 

• 1.19. Mirror Media poll shows Kao leading previous DPP mayor Lin Chih-chieh 41-24%. 
• 5.19-20. CNEWS poll finds Kao leading Chuang 55-21% (and didn't ask about Ho).  

Rating: leans IND. Kao has somehow stayed quite popular despite being suspended as mayor for 18 months; she's gotten a jump in support from the court reversal in December 2025. Hsinchu also has the most educated and youngest electorate in Taiwan, and Kao's former TPP affiliation and high-tech background make her a better fit here than in most of Taiwan. She's well-positioned to win in the fall, but independents are inherently vulnerable if there are both KMT and DPP candidates running, and Kao has some real political baggage. Prosecutors have also appealed the lower court ruling to the Supreme Court, and Kao could also become ineligible again if it restores the full conviction -- which would blow this race wide open. 

Hsinchu County 新竹縣

KMT: Nominated Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩) on March 28. 

DPP: Nominated Jhubei Mayor Cheng Chao-feng (鄭朝方) on June 10. 

Others: KMT Deputy Magistrate Chen Chien-hsien (陳見賢) has threatened to run as an independent. 

T-PVI: B+11

Notes: 

• Hsu Hsin-ying has a long history in Hsinchu County and a complicated relationship with the KMT. She left the party in 2015 when it was spiraling in the late Ma Ying-jeou era, and founded the Minkuotang (民國黨) as a kind of "protest" KMT party. She then ran as James Soong's VP candidate in 2016, and ran on the MKT label in the 2018 Hsinchu County election with the support of Ko Wen-je, losing to the current incumbent Yang Wen-ke 38-33%, with DPP nominee Cheng Chao-feng taking 28%. In 2020 she dissolved the MKT and ran as part of a Parliamentary Party Alliance that didn't win any seats. She rejoined the KMT in 2022, then was nominated and elected to the LY in Hsinchu's 1st District in 2024.
• The KMT held a primary here to determine the nominee, and Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun put her finger on the scale against Hsu by making the party member vote count for 30% of the final score. That still wasn't enough; Hsu narrowly beat Cheng's preferred candidate, deputy magistrate Chen Chien-hsien (陳見賢). Chen has pointedly not endorsed Hsu and rumors are that he will launch an independent bid, which would split the pan-blue vote.
• Cheng Chao-feng is the current mayor of Jhubei, the largest city in the county (37% of the total electorate) and effectively a suburb of high-tech Hsinchu. He won that office with only 40% of the vote in 2022 when KMT, TPP, and independent candidates split the rest. He's also run against Hsu before, in 2018, when both lost to Yang Wen-ke (楊文科).
• Hsinchu County is majority Hakka, a demographic group with which the DPP has traditionally been quite weak. Cheng is Hakka and was recruited heavily by the party center, with President Lai personally bestowing his campaign sash on him at the nomination press conference.
• The TPP is sitting this one out, and has focused their efforts instead on winning Jhubei; they've nominated Chiu Chen-yuan (邱臣遠), a former TPP legislator and Hsinchu City's deputy mayor (and acting mayor for the 18 months Kao was suspended). The KMT hasn't yielded the nomination there, though, instead putting forward county councilor Wu Hsu-chih (吳旭智). Neither side is backing down and Ko Wen-je has been unusually, publicly vocal about supporting a TPP candidate here. It's a little odd that this township-level race is where the party has decided to take a firm stand against the KMT. If the two parties do both register their own candidates, a significant part of the TPP's future hopes then will rest on Chiu's performance. FWIW, the DPP has nominated Yang-ming Chiao-tung University Professor Tseng Sheng-kai (曾聖凱) for Jhubei mayor. 
• The incumbent county executive Yang Wen-ke was indicted in July 2024 for accepting bribes in a real estate development in Jhubei. He was acquitted just last month, but several other county government officials were convicted. Prosecutors may appeal. Something to watch given Jhubei's political importance this cycle. 

Polls: 

• 2026.1.24-26. Taiwan Power News (?) reports poll with Hsu leading Cheng 39-34%. 
• 2.25-27. TVBS poll (reported in news article but not on polling site) looks at three-way race: finds Chen with 35%, Cheng with 29%, Hsu in 3rd with 22%. 
• 3.4-6. MyFormosa poll finds Hsu leading Cheng 38.5%-32%. 

Rating: Leans KMT. A lot depends on whether Chen Chien-hsien follows through with his threat to run as an independent. Cheng is the strongest candidate the DPP could run here, but even so it will take a serious pan-blue split for him to pull off the upset. 

Miaoli County 苗栗縣

KMT: Independent mayor Chung Tung-chin (鍾東錦) rejoined the KMT on September 14, 2025,  and is running for re-election. 

DPP: Nominated Chen Pin-an (陳品安) on November 26, 2025. 

Others: TBD

T-PVI: B+12 

Notes: 

• As speaker of the Miaoli County Council, Chung Tung-chin thumbed his nose at KMT party center in 2022, running as a renegade candidate when party chair Eric Chu settled instead on the obscure Hsieh Fu-hung (謝福弘) as the party's nominee. Chung was kicked out of the party but nonetheless won handily in a four-way race with 43%, although the DPP and NPP candidates combined won 45%. The party formally readmitted him in September 2025. As an incumbent KMT mayor he benefits from the party's presumption of renomination and its pact with the TPP; he's likely to have a much easier time of it this election cycle. 
• The DPP's Chen Pin-an got her start in politics in 2013 by defending protestors in Miaoli who'd tried to stop an onshore wind project by InfraVest, a German wind power company. She then put down roots in Miaoli: she won a county council seat in 2018 as an independent, then joined the DPP and was re-elected in 2022 with the highest vote total in her district. 

Polls: 

• TBD

Rating: Likely KMT. With no pan-blue challengers, Chung is well-positioned to win re-election in one of the deepest blue counties in Taiwan. That said, the DPP did well here to recruit Chen, who is a fresh face and has high name recognition and a decent electoral track record in Miaoli. The DPP+NPP combined strength in 2022 is also an intriguing data point. And Chung has a sordid personal history that could again blow up at some point. We'll know more once candidate registration has passed -- another independent candidate entering the race could open a path for an upset. 

Nantou County 南投縣

KMT: Renominated incumbent mayor Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華)。

DPP: Nominated Wen Shih-cheng (溫世政), a local dentist. 

Others: TBD. 

T-PVI: B+5

Notes: 

• Hsu Shu-hua has already had a long political career. She got her start in politics by being elected to the Nantou County Council as a PFP member way back in 2002, when she was only 27. She joined the KMT and won the Nantou City mayor's race in 2005, serving two terms, then won an LY by-election (for Nantou 2, the bluer of Nantou's two LY districts) in 2015 and was re-elected twice (with 57% and 55% of the vote) in tough years for the KMT. She was a KMT Central Standing Committee member and served as spokesperson for Han Kuo-yu's 2018 Kaohsiung mayoral campaign. In 2022, she won the Nantou magistrate race 56-44%, becoming Nantou's first-ever female magistrate. Moreover, her satisfaction ratings have improved significantly over her first term. As an incumbent in a blue-leading county with a long history of native-son/daughter voting patterns, she's going to be hard to beat. 
• That said, she does have some controversies in her recent past. During the 2022 campaign she was accused of plagiarizing her master's thesis; Feng Chia University ultimately accepted her revised thesis and let her keep the degree. In addition, her father, Hsu Tien-sung (許天送), who is a former two-term Nantou City representative council chair, is a former convict, which DPP challenger Frida Tsai Pei-hui (蔡培慧) raised as an attack line in their race in 2022; Hsu defended her father as having "already paid his debt to society." More recently, in 2024, her administration's plan to site a waste incinerator in Mingjian Township sparked organized local opposition and protester clashes during 2026 environmental review hearings.
• Wen Shih-cheng is a native (prodigal?) son who has been away for a long time: he grew up in Caotun but went to high school in Taichung, went to Taipei Medical University's dentistry program, and built a successful and famous dental implant practice in New Taipei. He hasn't lived in Nantou since, or been involved in electoral politics before. 
• The DPP's efforts to recruit a more experienced candidate here struck out: their top choices were at-large legislator Lo Mei-ling (羅美玲 - a naturalized citizen born in Malaysia who served in the Nantou County council) and Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀), who both declined. 

Polls: 

• TBD. 

Rating: Safe KMT. Of all the KMT-run localities, this one seems the hardest in which to imagine an upset. It's got a popular incumbent mayor running for re-election in a blue-leaning area, facing a complete political novice who hasn't lived in the county for decades, with no third-party challengers or intra-party splits on the horizon.

Changhua County 彰化縣

KMT: Nominated Wei Ping-cheng (魏平政) on May 13, 2026. 

DPP: Nominated Chen Su-yueh (陳素月) in December 2025 via internal poll. 

Others: Former DPP mayor Chiu Chien-fu (邱建富); TPP's Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如); KMT legislator Hsieh Yi-feng (謝衣鳯) has threatened to run as an independent. 

T-PVI: B+1

Notes: 

• It seems like there's always at least one race that goes haywire for both major parties in each election cycle. In 2022 that was Miaoli. In 2026, it's Changhua. Both parties are dealing with disgruntled primary losers who threaten to split the vote, and there's still the threat of a renegade campaign by a TPP-linked candidate, too. 
• Chen Su-yueh is the sitting legislator from Changhua's 4th District, a seat she's held since winning a by-election in 2015. Before that she was a Changhua County Councilor for two terms (2006-14). Her vote totals as a legislator: 2016 - 57% (DPP Pr 57%); 2020 - 53% (DPP Pr 57%), 2024 - 52% (DPP Pr 39%).
• Chiu Chien-fu is a 39-year DPP member and two-term mayor of Changhua City -- the largest in the county -- who was passed over for the nomination. He quit the party in June and announced a run as an independent. 
• Wei Ping-cheng is a lawyer from a well-known Shetou-area silk-stocking manufacturing family who was nominated by party chair Cheng Li-wun on May 13, 2026. He has no previous electoral experience. 
• The party passed over sitting Legislator Hsieh Yi-feng from Changhua's 3rd District, who had stronger polling numbers but was blocked for "family reasons," per KMT party center. 
• The TPP's Tsai Pi-ru declared for the race shortly after Wei was nominated, arguing that she would be the stronger candidate for the pan-blue side. But on June 3, the TPP election committee decided not to nominate a candidate in Changhua, and Tsai publicly dropped her bid but still didn't rule out a possible run. 
• Incumbent KMT magistrate Wang Huei-mei (王惠美) twice won easily here but is term-limited out, meaning this is another open-seat race where the KMT is playing defense. Wang has also been noticeably absent from Wei's campaign events so far. 

Polls: 

• 5.20-21. CNEWS poll looks at Chen, Wei, and Tsai; Chen in lead with 30%, Wei at 14%, Tsai at 8.5%. 
• 8.10-17. ETToday poll finds Chen way ahead of Wei, 36-19%, with Chiu getting 12%. 

Rating: Leans DPP. Changhua is as close to an evenly-balanced county as there is in Taiwan -- only one point bluer than the national average. Thanks to Wang Huei-mei's popularity, the KMT has held the county government without trouble for eight years, but they've nominated a weak candidate in Wei who doesn't appear to have the support of other local powerbrokers. Chen Su-yueh is vulnerable given the renegade DPP candidate, but Wei is going to struggle to unify the pan-blue vote behind him, as the latest polls show. If Hsieh or Tsai run that would make things even worse for the KMT. It would probably take a late switch in KMT candidate to make this competitive.   

See also Part 1 (Intro); Part 2 (The Big Six); Part 4 (South, East, and Offshore Islands); Part 5 (Summing Up) 

Part 1 (Intro); Part 3 (North and Central); Part 4 (South, East, and Offshore Islands); Part 5 (Summing Up) 

First up: the six special municipalities (直轄市), together containing about 70 percent of Taiwan's total population. These are the big prizes and will get most of the media attention. They will also do the most to shape the narrative about who "won" this election cycle.

The current breakdown: the KMT is defending four cities: Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, and Taichung. The DPP is defending two: Tainan and Kaohsiung. By population: 

For comparison, here's my preview and the results from four years ago.

T-PVI

Like last time, I've added in a rough estimate of the partisan leaning of each locality. Following the Partisan Voting Index (PVI) developed by the Cook Political Report for elections in the United States, I've called this the Taiwan Partisan Voting Index (T-PVI). To calculate T-PVI, I averaged the DPP presidential vote share in each jurisdiction over the last two presidential elections (in 2020 and 2024), then took the difference between the national and local vote share. B+1 means the city or county is one point bluer (i.e. less favorable to the DPP) than the national electorate. G+1 means it is one point greener (more favorable to the DPP.) By this measure, the "bluest" locality in Taiwan is Lienchiang County, at B+33, and the "greenest" is Tainan at G+11. Of Taiwan's 22 localities, 15 are bluer than average, and 7 are greener. So, in a national political environment where the blue and green camps are running even, the blue side should be favored to win 15 localities to the green side's 7.

Polling in Taiwan

Taiwan has lots of polling companies, but they vary widely in quality and frequency, and some of the ones that are most consistent and associated with mainstream media outlets also have strong house effects. For instance, TVBS has a large pan-blue bias (on the order of 10 points), while Liberty Times has a smaller pan-green bias. That doesn't make them useless -- a biased estimator can still be informative -- but it does mean you shouldn't take polls from one company at face value without also comparing to polls from other outlets. I'll try to post polls from all reputable houses (and some less-reputable ones when there's no other alternative) and let the data do most of the talking. 

Sites with polls of multiple races: 

• Storm Media polls page.
• TVBS Polling Center. 
• MyFormosa
• CNEWS
• Mirror Media
• Liberty Times
• 2026 Global View Local Mayors Satisfaction poll

Taipei - 台北市

KMT: Re-nominated Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安). 

DPP: Nominated Shen Bo-yang (Puma Shen 沈伯洋), on May 13. 

Others: TBD

T-PVI: B+3

Notes:

• Chiang Wan-an is KMT royalty. He's the ostensible grandson of Chiang Ching-kuo through his father John Chang --> Chiang (章孝嚴 --> 蔣孝嚴), who claimed to be an illegitimate child of Chiang Ching-kuo and in the 2000s changed the family name to make the link explicit. Chiang's father was a key figure in the party for decades. The younger Chiang spent significant time in the United States, earning a law degree and practicing law in the San Francisco Bay Area before eventually returning to Taiwan.
• Chiang gets mocked a lot by green partisans for a rather wooden campaign style and a reserved personality (and also for his family lineage), but he's more than just a famous name. At this point in his career he's put together a rather impressive electoral history:
• 2016: He entered electoral politics for the first time as a candidate for the legislature in this election cycle -- a very bad one for the KMT -- and won Taipei's 3rd district with 47% of the vote at the same time that Tsai Ing-wen carried it 52-38%.
• 2020: In one of the marquee races of that cycle, he fended off a stiff challenge from the DPP's Enoch Wu, winning re-election 51-45% and again running nine points ahead of the KMT presidential ticket (Han Kuo-yu won only 42% in the district).
• 2022: Chiang then won a three-way race for Taipei mayor with 42% of the vote, consolidating the KMT vote behind him while the DPP's Chen Shih-chung (32%) and the TPP's Huang Shan-shan (25%) split the rest. 
• Puma Shen is a first-term DPP party-list legislator and co-founder of DoubleThink Labs and the Kuma Academy. He's been a frequent public presence since entering the legislature. But he's never run for elected office before on his own. This nomination seems more aimed at burnishing the DPP's national and international image than actually trying to defeat Chiang.  
• The DPP had one of its critical breakthroughs in the 1990s when Chen Shui-bian won the mayor's race in Taipei in 1994, but the party hasn't come close to winning here since Chen was defeated by Ma Ying-jeou in 1998. Since then the party's candidate vote share: 36%, 41%, 44%, none (the party supported Ko Wen-je, who won 57%), 17%, 32%.  
• Chiang took on a prominent role in the KMT's rally against tainted cooking oil in late July, and he has been attacking the DPP government more forcefully in other forums in recent months. Because of his family background and the fact he's the mayor of Taipei, he is sometimes floated as a potential presidential candidate for 2028. I think he's better positioned to run in 2032; he's young enough to afford to wait, and he still is mostly untested in national politics. But I do think he is a "break glass in case of emergency" option in case the KMT can't coalesce around any other contender for 2028. That is, as long as he wins reelection. 
• Like the mayors of all six special municipalities, Chiang is relatively popular right now: a Global Views Monthly survey from May put him at about 65% approval. That's neck-and-neck with Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) of Taichung for the most popular KMT special municipality mayor. 

Polls: 

• TVBS poll from May 21-26, 2026, finds Chiang with a commanding lead over Shen, 56-30%. 

Rating: likely KMT. Chiang is a popular incumbent running for re-election in a city that leans blue, although not as much as it used to -- Lai Ching-te in 2024 did only 1.6 points worse here than in New Taipei. Those partisan fundamentals suggest that with the right candidate the DPP could be competitive in Taipei. Unfortunately for them, unless it's a green wave year, that candidate would need to be far stronger than Puma Shen, who is completely untested in electoral politics and already a somewhat partisan and polarizing figure from his short time in the legislature. It's surprising the DPP couldn't come up with someone more formidable to challenge Chiang.  

New Taipei - 新北市

KMT: Nominated Lee Shu-chuan (李四川) on April 29. 

DPP: Nominated Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) on November 25, 2025. 

Others: TBD

T-PVI: B+1

Notes:

• Incumbent mayor and former presidential candidate Hou You-yi / Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) is term-limited out, so this is an open-seat contest: one of 10 (!) the KMT is defending this cycle. 
• This nomination was the stiffest test of whether the KMT and TPP would actually be able to cooperate in these elections. Almost a year ago, the TPP's current party leader Huang Kuo-chang signaled he would run here and pushed to win KMT's backing for a joint nomination. I thought Huang might drive a hard bargain and demand New Taipei in exchange for the TPP supporting KMT candidates elsewhere. But in the end, the TPP agreed to a joint polling process for all the mayoral races, and in the contest for New Taipei conducted in April, Huang polled worse than Lee and meekly accepted the results. That bodes well for the KMT, and not so well for the TPP's long-term prospects. 
• Lee is a rather colorless long-time party official who has served multiple KMT mayors in a deputy role for almost a decade: first Eric Chu in New Taipei (2010-14), then Han Kuo-yu in Kaohsiung (2018-20), then Chiang Wan-an in Taipei (2022-present). In between he was Secretary-General of the Executive Yuan from 2014-15 during the late Ma era, and then Secretary-General of the KMT from 2015-16. He is a solid if rather uninspiring choice for the party. 
• The DPP has still never won New Taipei since it became a special municipality in 2010. The last DPP candidate to win here was Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) way back in 2001 when it was still Taipei County. Su also happens to be Su Chiao-hui's father. The DPP is hoping the younger Su can channel some of that family electoral magic to end their losing streak here. 
• Su has a decent electoral track record of her own. In New Taipei 5, she ran level with Tsai Ing-wen in 2016 and 2020, but 14 points ahead of Lai in 2024. Perhaps more impressive is her handle on intra-party politics: she cleared the field and obtained the DPP's nomination extremely early in the cycle, in November 2025.  
• New Taipei is Taiwan's most populous locality, with over four million people, making it the biggest electoral prize in these elections. It is also politically closely divided: it is only about a point "bluer" than the national average.  

Polls: 

• TVBS poll from January 6-16, 2026, finds Lee way ahead of Su, 47-32%. 
• MyFormosa poll from April 8-10, 2026, reports Lee at 35.5% support, Su at 34.5%, consistent with a very close race.  

Rating: Toss-up. Su has the advantage of having actually run in and won elections in New Taipei, while Lee has never been a candidate before. On the other hand, Lee has ably served three very different KMT mayors and will have the backing of outgoing incumbent Hou Yu-ih. Most importantly, Lee has avoided a split with the TPP over this race; Huang Kuo-chang pledged to support Lee's campaign and Lee promised to appoint TPP members to his government if he wins. New Taipei has a near-even partisan balance and this is a marquee race, so national factors will likely tip the balance here.  

Taoyuan - 桃園市

KMT: Renominated incumbent mayor Chang Shan-cheng (Simon Chang 張善政). 

DPP: Nominated Huang Shih-chieh (黃世杰) on April 15.

Others: TBD

T-PVI: B+4

Notes:

• Chang Shan-cheng was a surprise pick for the KMT nomination four years ago, a decision that party chairman Eric Chu took some flack for. It took Chang some time to consolidate the party behind his campaign, but in the end he won convincingly over the DPP's Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬), 52-40% with a TPP candidate taking another 5%. Since then he's steered clear of national controversy. 
• Chang served in the second Ma Ying-jeou administration, as deputy premier and then premier after January 2016, when Ma was a lame duck. He was also Han Kuo-yu's running mate in the 2020 presidential election. So he's held key roles in the KMT for over a decade.  
• Huang Shih-chieh is a former legislator who served one term representing Taoyuan's 2nd District from 2020-2024. He lost re-election by only about 1200 votes (48.2-47.6%) -- one of several marginal wins for the KMT on which their current legislative plurality rests. Huang then joined the Lai administration as Deputy Minister of Justice until being nominated here.
• Huang initially entered politics when he was recruited to join DPP Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan's (鄭文燦) administration in 2014. Cheng was a popular two-term mayor but is now standing trial on corruption charges. It's not clear if the Cheng connection is a hindrance to Huang at this point, but it points to the real damage the DPP brand has suffered from Cheng's corruption scandals.   

Polls: 

• Nothing reliable yet that I've seen, but unscientific polls indicate a blowout for Chang. 

Rating: Likely KMT. Like the other special municipality mayors, Chang is popular, with 62% of respondents expressing approval in the Global Views survey in May. Popular incumbent mayors are hard to knock off absent a national wave. And so far there's no sign the green camp is benefiting from any kind of political tailwind.   

Taichung - 台中市

KMT: Nominated Chiang Chi-chen (Johnny Chiang 江啟臣) on April 1. 

DPP: Nominated Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純) on October 22, 2025. 

Others: TBD

T-PVI: B+1

Notes:

• Chiang is the long-time legislator from Taichung's 8th District and has served as the deputy speaker of the Legislative Yuan since February 2024. He's long aspired to be Taichung mayor; he lost a close contest for the KMT nomination in 2018 to current mayor Lu Shiow-yen when both were young-ish legislators, and he bided his time until the position came open again. Now it has and he's long been assumed to be the heir-apparent.
• Complicating his ascent was Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), another long-time Taichung legislator (first elected in 1998!), who surprised some people by challenging Chiang for the party nomination. Chiang won the internal poll at the end of March; the numbers were kept confidential by mutual agreement. 
• Ho Hsin-chun is also a veteran legislator. She's represented Taichung's 7th District since 2012, and she's consistently run ahead of the DPP presidential ticket: 4 points in 2012, 7 points in 2016, 6 points in 2020, and a whopping 16 points ahead of Lai in 2024. 
• That two incumbent Taichung legislators are facing off makes this look like a pretty even fight, at least on paper. Alas, Taichung electoral politics is weird. Some time ago I was looking at correlations between legislative and presidential vote shares across recent elections, and Taichung had a bunch of outliers in both directions: both KMT and DPP legislators did better than their respective presidential tickets, including both Ho and Chiang. For some reason (probably factional politics) the personal vote here seems to be significantly more important than elsewhere -- and that makes it harder to forecast the outcome without some insider-y knowledge. 

Polls: 

• The only mainstream poll I've seen for this is from TVBS way back in January 2026, before the nomination was decided; they found Chiang leading Ho 46-31%, much better than Yang's 36-34%. 

Rating: Leans KMT. That's based on not a lot more than a gut feeling right now: Taichung is a swing city, and national factors currently favor the KMT a bit in open-seat races.    

Tainan - 台南市

KMT: Nominated Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) on December 24, 2025

DPP: Nominated Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) after she won the polling primary on January 16. 

Others: TBD

T-PVI: G+11

Notes:

• The DPP held a polling primary here to determine their nominee. Incumbent Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) is term-limited out, and two legislators from Tainan, Chen Ting-fei (Tainan 3) and Lin Chun-hsien (Tainan 5), duked it out in the contest to replace him. Chen ultimately prevailed over Lin by only about 2 points in the head-to-head poll against Hsieh Lung-chieh. 
• The KMT had a much easier time deciding their nominee: they went back to Hsieh Lung-chieh, who won over 43% of the vote in a valiant losing effort against Huang in 2022. 
• Tainan has been run by a DPP mayor since it became a special municipality in 2010. It's the greenest locality in Taiwan; a KMT upset here would be truly monumental. But Hsieh wasn't that far away in 2022. He was helped by the fact that Huang has ranked near the bottom of Taiwan mayors for much of his time in office. Without an unpopular incumbent to run against, this race is likely not to be as close this time around. 
• There's long been rumblings of discontent in Tainan about its lack of economic development and good infrastructure; it's the only one of the six special municipalities without a mass transit rail system, and it's now also the smallest of the six, with 1.85 million people. It's also suffered significant flooding events, including a major one in June. In addition, the DPP's factional politics here are especially fractious. 

Polls: 

• The only recent poll is a web-only one from BigMedia (鉅聞天下新聞網) in March; it finds Chen with only a 5-point lead over Hsieh, 45-40%. 

Rating: Likely DPP.  Something would have to go catastrophically wrong here for the DPP to lose Tainan. That said, something almost did in 2018: Huang Wen-che won with only 38% percent, and he underperformed here again in 2022. If there's pan-green renegade candidates in the race, that could really make things interesting. 

Kaohsiung - 高雄市

KMT: Nominated Ko Chih-en (柯志恩) on December 24, 2025.

DPP: Nominated Lai Jui-lung (賴瑞隆) on January 21. 

Others: TBD

T-PVI: G+7

Notes:

• Like in Tainan, there was a fierce intra-party struggle for the nomination that was settled by a polling primary. Lai won that on January 13, besting fellow legislators Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩), Lin Tai-hua (林岱樺), and Hsu Chih-chieh (許智傑). For primary polling junkies, this a great example of how arbitrary the results can be: Lai won the combined polls by only 0.31% over Chiu. 
• Lai is a three-term legislator first elected in Kaohsiung 9 in 2016 who then switched to Kaohsiung 8 in 2020 after redistricting. His electoral performance in Kaohsiung 8: In 2020 he ran 7 points behind Tsai Ing-wen, but in 2024 he ran 7 points ahead of Lai, winning almost exactly the same vote share. Maybe that's growth? 
• The KMT has again nominated Ko Chih-en (柯志恩), their nominee from 2022. I'll repeat here what I posted before, since nothing substantial has changed...Ko is a faculty member at Tamkang University in Tamsui, New Taipei. Her father Ko Wen-fu (柯文福) was magistrate of Pingtung County from 1973-1981, so she comes from a political family in a neighboring county. In 2016, she was ranked second on the KMT's party list, ensuring her a seat for the 2016-2020 term. In 2020 she ran for the LY in New Taipei 7, losing 46-40% to Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政), then returned to teaching. She has also headed the KMT's National Policy Foundation. She moved her household registration from New Taipei to Kaohsiung for the 2022 election. After 2024 she's an at-large legislator on the KMT party list. 
• The outgoing DPP mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) is quite popular and is sometimes floated as a potential presidential candidate -- perhaps even in 2028 if Lai falters. 

Polls: 

• 2026.1.19. ETToday puts out a poll right after the DPP primary showing Ko leading Lai 44-37%. 
• 8.10. BigMedia releases a poll showing a very close race, with Lai ahead narrowly, 48-46%. 
• 8.14. An unnamed DPP party insider leaks that Lai is consistently leading Ko by about 10 points, according to their internal polls. Take that with a huge grain of salt, but it's a data point. 

Rating: Likely DPP. The KMT seems quite bullish about their chances here, and polls from various dubious sources suggest a close race. Recent history also gives them some hope: Han Kuo-yu did pull off the upset of the decade here in 2018. But Kaohsiung is also a city with a popular DPP mayor, and the DPP controls all eight LY seats. I expect normal partisan leanings to reassert themselves as the campaign picks up, and the KMT hasn't been remotely competitive in a high-turnout presidential or legislative race anywhere in Kaohsiung since Huang Chao-hsun won re-election in 2016. For Ko to have a real chance, she needs a lot of DPP supporters to be demoralized and sit this one out.   

Part 1 (Intro); Part 3 (North and Central); Part 4 (South, East, and Offshore Islands); Part 5 (Summing Up)

What's This?

In the run-up to Taiwan's 2022 local elections, I put together a set of previews on the local mayor's races to help me track the campaign. I'm going to do that again here for 2026 and roll these out over the next few days. 

Part 1. Introduction -- see below.

Part 2. The Big Six

Part 3. North and Central

Part 4. South, East, and Offshore Islands

Part 5. Summing Up. 

Introduction

Taiwan's local elections will take place on November 28, 2026. There are contests for over 10,000 different offices, ranging from the mayor of Taipei all the way down to village chiefs in indigenous communities in rural Taitung. In Taiwan these are often called the "9-in-1 elections" (九合一選舉) because they combine voting for nine different types of offices, most of which used to be held at different times, in one single campaign and election day held once every four years. These are:

• (1) Mayors and (2) city councilors in centrally-administered municipalities (直轄市市長，市議員) for Taipei, Kaohsiung, New Taipei City, Taichung, Tainan, and Taoyuan;
• (3) Executives and (4) councilors in counties and county-level municipalities (縣／省轄市長，縣／市議員);
• (5) Township and town heads and (6) councilors (鄉／鎮長，鄉／鎮議員); 
• (7) Village and ward heads (村／里長);
• (8) Indigenous "self-governing" district heads and (9) representatives (自治區長，區代表). 

This consolidation of election terms and cycles has turned local elections into something like a U.S. federal midterm election. It's obviously a big deal in local politics -- all of Taiwan's elected offices except for the president and the legislature are up for grabs. But it's also a big deal for all three parties that hold seats in the legislature right now, and there are some important if indirect implications for the 2028 races and for the current national political stalemate. 

What's at Stake for the Political Parties?

The Electoral Rules

The Campaign

Elections in Taiwan are handled by the Central Election Commission following the Public Officials Election and Recall Act. Some key dates for the 2026 elections: 

• August 20, 2026: CEC issues the formal election announcement
• August 31: candidate registration opens
• September 4: candidate registration closes
• October 23: candidate ballot order determined by drawing lots
• November 8: voter rolls finalized
• November 13: official campaign period for the special municipality mayors races begins
• November 18: official campaign period for county/city mayor, councilors, township heads, indigenous district chiefs begins. Polling blackout begins. 
• November 23: campaign period for local representative (ward/village head, township reps, indigenous district reps) begins 
• November 28: Election Day 

A couple features to note about the campaign process. First, despite the official campaign period being only 15 days long for mayors, and even shorter for the other offices, restrictions on campaigning aren't really enforced in practice. Taiwan has pretty liberal free speech and advertising regulations, and candidates have been putting up billboards and out campaigning for months already.

Second, there's a weird twist in Taipei, which in 2022 passed its own ordinance limiting campaign billboards anywhere in the city. This rule is quite a bit stricter than the national standard and moves Taipei incrementally closer to the tight electoral regulatory regimes in place in Japan and especially Korea. (That's not a good thing.) The Taipei ordinance:

• permits campaign advertisements only on official public campaign boards, party and campaign offices, and vehicles;
• defines a campaign advertisement as a poster, banner or billboard having at least three of the following five items: name, image, ballot number, campaign item, and slogan or trademark; and
• applies to everyone, including private individuals not employed by any candidate or campaign.

But it's also full of loopholes -- in 2024 it did little to limit campaign advertising for the 2024 elections. An obvious way to skirt it is to include only two of the five items on any given poster. There is also lax enforcement -- it requires someone to make a complaint before the city government will investigate. And it's also vulnerable to a constitutional challenge (if and when the constitutional court is functional again), not least since it restricts all displays of campaign posters, even on one's own property. (That's even stricter than Japan's rules.) Nevertheless, this is something to watch this election cycle, as a huge challenge for candidates is to get their names out to uninformed and disengaged voters, and billboards, flags, and posters have long been a key part of this effort. This is the first time local elections have been held under this new rule, so it's untested, and advertising is much more important in the low-salience council and ward races than in the legislative and presidential contests.  

Third, Taiwan has a polling blackout period that is strictly enforced: no one can publish or share polls from 10 days before the election through Election Day. Taiwan is a poll-crazy place, and this restriction is intended to prevent last-minute polls from affecting voting behavior. The CEC can impose heavy financial penalties on violators, and the blackout is generally respected. We'll see if that remains true this cycle. 

Fourth, there will be at least three referendums held alongside the local elections, on "introducing caning as a criminal punishment, abolishing the government’s 'nuclear-free homeland' policy, and using traffic fines to improve road safety." At one point the KMT and TPP  were discussing using their legislative majority to refer up to 10 different referendum questions to the voters. Since the legislature also changed the law back to require referendums to be held the same day as the local elections -- reversing a DPP change introduced after a voting fiasco in 2018, which itself was a consequence of a previous DPP-enacted change to the referendum law -- there is a danger that the voting and counting process will get bogged down again. The current CEC chairman You Ying-lung (游盈隆) has pleaded with the LY for several months to cut down the number of questions to make the process run more smoothly. And today, they did.  

And finally, I'll just note that Taiwan still does not have an absentee or mail voting process, nor does it have early voting. This puts a disproportionate burden on young people, active-duty military personnel, and anyone else who isn't living at their official household to return there to vote. It's been a long-standing complaint that has never been addressed, even during COVID. 

The Electoral System

For the mayor, township head, and village/ward chief elections, the winner is decided by simple plurality. But for council and township and indigenous district representative seats, Taiwan still uses the old single non-transferable vote system (SNTV) in multi-member districts (複數選區) . This system has an important implication for partisan competition: the electoral threshold of exclusion is much lower than in the executive races, and small parties can be competitive for a seat by winning 10% of the vote or even less in some districts. That means the usual KMT-DPP duopoly in mayor's races is weakened in local races, and small parties face a more forgiving electoral environment than in elections to the Legislative Yuan. 

Traditionally, independent candidates have also fared well in local councilor races. Another truism of Taiwan politics is that the lower down one goes in the hierarchy, the less partisan affiliation matters, so that most village and ward chiefs (~90% in the last election) register as independents. 

Finally, it's worth noting that Taiwan has long had a gender quota for SNTV races. Since 1999 it's been a 25% requirement -- i.e. at least one of every four seats in a district must go to a woman. If one of the top four vote-getters is already a woman, nothing changes; if none is, the fourth-place male candidate is displaced by the top female candidate. This rule only kicks in if the district magnitude is at least four, which in practice means it's applied somewhat unevenly across Taiwan's localities. Some counties elect most of their representatives from districts with three seats or fewer; for instance, in Penghu only the Magong City district elects more than four councilors and is therefore covered by the quota. In practice, the actual share of women winning elections to councils is significantly above the 1/4 requirement: in 2014, it was over 30% across all councils, and it's risen from there to about 40% (special municipalities) and 36% (city and county councils), respectively, in 2022.

Importantly, this quota has contributed over the long term to the impressive representation of women at the highest elected offices: over 40 percent in the current legislature. Huang Chang-ling and Nathan Batto both have excellent papers on this topic.   

See also: Part 2 (The Big Six), Part 3 (North and Central), Part 4 (South, East, and Offshore Islands), and Part 5 (Summing Up).

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