Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an's mother turned up at Daan Forest Park on November 1, 2026, telling park visitors she was his mother and asking them to back his reelection. She appeared on the same afternoon his ruling party challenger, Puma Shen, ended a campaign motorcade at the park, with the 2026 Taiwan local elections less than four weeks away.
Chiang, of the Kuomintang (KMT), Taiwan's main opposition party, is seeking a second term against Shen, the candidate of President Lai Ching-te's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Taiwan votes on November 28 in its "nine-in-one" local elections, which fill mayoral, county, and council seats across the island at once. The Taipei race is widely treated as a test of both parties' strength ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
Shen Calls A Mother's Appeal For Her Son Touching
Speaking to reporters on November 2, Shen said he learned only from news reports that Chiang's mother, Huang Mei-lun, had been at the park. He said he was glad she came and found it "quite touching" that a mother would step out to win votes for her son.
With just over 20 days left before polling day, Shen said every campaign would be working hard to rally supporters and drive up turnout, and that he respected that. He added that he hoped she had been able to feel the atmosphere of his "Taipei Big Yang Wave" rally. Shen's campaign has branded its events the "Yang Wave," a play on the character yang, meaning ocean, in his Chinese given name, Po-yang.
Crowds Surprised Shen In An Opposition Stronghold
The November 1 motorcade wound through Taipei's Daan and Wenshan districts, an area long regarded as a deep blue stronghold of the KMT. According to Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA), it set off from Jiying Temple in Wenshan's Muzha neighborhood and ended at Daan Forest Park, with Shen wearing a New York Mets Taiwan Day jersey.
Shen admitted the reception surprised him. From Xinglong Road through Wenshan, he said, people kept waving at the convoy almost without a break, and he had to keep waving back. He said he got only two chances to rest along the entire route, each lasting about five seconds.
Volunteers kept order along the way, Shen said. On some stretches no one was waiting at first, but as the convoy approached, residents began stepping out of side alleys. Some had been watching his livestream at home, he said, and hurried outside to wave when they saw the motorcade was about to pass their homes. He described the turnout of local residents as unexpected and moving.
Taipei Poll Shows Chiang Holding A Narrow Lead
The latest Taipei numbers point to a tight race. In a snap TVBS poll taken right after the first televised Taipei mayoral debate on October 31, Chiang led Shen 46% to 42% in overall support, Storm Media reported. The same survey found 47% of respondents thought Shen performed better in the debate, compared with 40% for Chiang.
TVBS conducted that survey by landline between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. on October 31, collecting 1,747 responses, and one political consultant cautioned in a Facebook post that a same-day poll captures voters at a moment of peak emotion.
Kaohsiung Poll Puts Ruling Party Seven Points Ahead
In the southern port city of Kaohsiung, Taiwan's third most populous city and a longtime DPP base, a United Daily News poll released on November 2 showed DPP candidate Lai Jui-lung at 40% and KMT candidate Ko Chih-en at 33%, a gap of seven percentage points. Another 26% of voters were undecided, and three minor candidates drew less than 1% combined.
Asked who they expected to win, 49% of respondents picked Lai and 21% picked Ko, while 30% could not say. Both main parties' bases held firm: 88% of KMT supporters backed Ko, and 82% of DPP supporters backed Lai.
Supporters of the Taiwan People's Party (TPP), a smaller opposition party, leaned heavily toward Ko, with 60% backing her and 9% backing Lai. Among voters with no party leaning, Ko led Lai 25% to 22%, but 53% had yet to decide.
The newspaper surveyed 1,101 registered Kaohsiung voters by landline and mobile phone from October 28 to 31, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Reports on the survey noted that it does not yet reflect the impact of the candidates' televised debate on October 30.
Ko Says Her Internal Numbers Show A Dead Heat
Lai said his campaign would approach the final stretch "with trepidation and caution" and keep working to win over voters who have not made up their minds. He urged Kaohsiung residents to turn out on November 28 and to reward both his 20 years of work in the city and the record of the administration of outgoing DPP Mayor Chen Chi-mai.
Ko disputed the gap. She said her campaign's internal polling showed the race was roughly even, and that the contest had grown even closer since the debate. She said she would keep campaigning at her own pace rather than react to every poll.
With undecided and nonpartisan voters still holding the balance in Kaohsiung, and only a few points separating the candidates in Taipei, both parties face a final three-week sprint to mobilize turnout in the 2026 Taiwan local elections.
Original Article In Chinese: https://www.storm.mg/article/11177653
