With eighty-one days to go before Taiwan's nine-in-one local elections, cooperation talks between the Kuomintang and the Taiwan People's Party in Hsinchu County have broken down — bad news for the blue camp's prospects.

• The TPP has ordered its members not to campaign for Hsu Hsin-ying, the KMT's candidate for Hsinchu County magistrate, with violators facing expulsion from the party at worst.
• KMT legislator Lin Szu-ming said bluntly that Hsu has not worked Zhubei directly for eight years: "She has been out of touch for eight years."
• Zhubei's population has grown to 220,000, two-thirds of it young people and tech-sector workers who moved in for jobs, and most of them have little time for blue-versus-green politics.
• Consolidation within the blue camp is also incomplete, and the bruising primary fight with the camp of Deputy County Magistrate Chen Chien-hsien has yet to be patched up.
• DPP candidate Cheng Chao-fang is mounting a formidable challenge, and white-camp votes could swing his way.

Outlook: The most likely result is that the KMT holds on to the Zhubei mayoralty but loses the Hsinchu County magistracy, unless the two parties' leaderships can cool their supporters' tempers in short order.