The fight for Taipei's Songshan-Xinyi city council seats is unusually tight this cycle, and the KMT's traditional trick of telling supporters which candidate to back is losing its power — bad news for party strategists, good news for independent-minded voters.

• Songshan-Xinyi drops from 10 seats to 9, turning it into a knife-fight among 10 candidates.
• The area leans blue on paper, but races there are decided by a few hundred votes — in 2022 a green candidate lost by under 400.
• Vote-allocation guidance is weakening because Taipei has a lot of independent voters who ignore party instructions even when they back the party.
• Star candidates who hoover up huge vote counts leave fellow party members scraping the bottom of the list — a well-known Taipei politician once lost his own seat after campaigning too hard for newcomers.
• Blue and white voters shift easily between the two parties, adding more unpredictability.

Outlook: The KMT will push its supporters to spread votes evenly to protect a stable council majority for Mayor Chiang Wan-an's next four years.