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 often 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 (劉櫂豪) 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 seventh (!) time he's tried for that office; he lost the other six attempts including the by-election against Kuang Li-chen in 2006. 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-hsiung (莊瑞雄); 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.
• 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 named Hu-hsi Township head Chen Chen-chung (陳振中) as its nominee without controversy. 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 rivalry 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)

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).