Cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Taiwan People's Party in Hsinchu County and Hsinchu City has formally broken down — bad news for the TPP, whose seat count is already limited, but of little consequence to the KMT.

• The TPP's Central Committee announced that party members who publicly campaign for another party's candidates for Hsinchu County magistrate or Zhubei mayor could face expulsion from the party.
• The trigger for the collapse was KMT Hsinchu County magistrate candidate Hsu Hsin-ying's denial that she had ever agreed to cede the Zhubei mayoral seat to the TPP.
• The TPP's team accused the other side of going back on its word, but was met with a counter-question: if that is the case, why not simply sever ties with the KMT nationwide?
• The crux of the matter is the TPP's bargaining capital — it holds only eight seats in the Legislative Yuan and has locked itself into an anti-green line, making a genuine falling-out hard to pull off.
• Yeh Yao-yuan, a professor at the University of St. Thomas in the United States, put it bluntly: a third force that lacks political strength has effectively already killed off its own future.

Outlook: The blue and white camps will likely each field their own candidates in Hsinchu and face off directly; if the TPP's vote share looks poor, its room to negotiate terms with the KMT in the future will shrink even further.