TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Kuomingtang (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇) on Sunday (Jan. 8) won a by-election held to fill the seat in Taiwan’s legislature vacated by former legislator Chiang Wang-an (蔣萬安), who was elected mayor of Taipei in November.

Her main rival was the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Enoch Wu (吳怡農), who was director of DPP’s Taipei City Chapter from February 2021 to June 2022.

The KMT candidate garnered 60,519 votes versus Wu's 54,739 votes, winning by 5,780 votes.

However, Wang’s by-election victory does not move the needle with regard to the DPP’s dominance in the legislature, where the ruling party still holds a 62-38 majority over the KMT. Taiwan's next legislative election will take place in 2024 alongside the presidential election.

The contested seat is in the legislative district that includes Taipei City’s Zhongshan District and Songshan District. The voter turnout was only 40.94%, per the Central Election Commission’s statistics.

The by-election defeat dealt another blow to the ruling party, which had suffered a tremendous setback in the local elections. After the local elections, the number of DPP-ruled counties and municipalities shrank from seven to five and the total population of the DPP-ruled regions only accounts for one-fourth of Taiwan’s total population, which bodes ill for the ruling party's election prospects in 2024.

DPP's candidate Enoch Wu. (CNA photo)