Tsai Yi-yu wins DPP poll for Chiayi County nominee

• Staff writer, with CNA

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘) is set to be nominated by his party as its candidate for Chiayi County commissioner after securing a decisive victory in the party’s primary.

In the primary, determined by opinion polls conducted by three polling firms on Tuesday night, Tsai performed far better against the likely Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate, Legislator Wang Yu-min (王育敏), than the other candidate vying for the DPP nomination, Chiayi County Councilor Huang Jung-li (黃榮利).

Both Tsai and Huang easily beat Wang in the polls, but Tsai won by a much bigger margin.

He garnered 64.8 percent support against Wang’s 14.2 percent, while Huang received 38.1 percent compared with Wang’s 16.3 percent.

The polls, conducted on Tuesday from 6pm to 10:30pm over landlines, garnered a combined 1,200 valid samples.

Tsai is expected to be formally nominated by the DPP at its Central Executive Committee meeting on Wednesday next week.

Meanwhile, the DPP conducted polls for its Tainan mayoral primary last night, in which DPP legislators Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) and Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) are vying to represent the party in the mayoral race in the traditional DPP stronghold.

The result of the Tainan poll is to be announced at 10am today.

Legislator Lai Jui-lung (賴瑞隆) won the DPP’s Kaohsiung mayoral primary on Tuesday, defeating three other candidates, all of them lawmakers representing constituencies in the city.

The DPP employs a hybrid system for picking mayoral and commissioner nominees, sometimes having the party directly select a candidate and sometimes holding primaries using telephone polling.

In the run-up to Taiwan’s local elections in November, the DPP has opted to internally select most of its candidates for KMT-held or KMT-leaning municipalities, including in New Taipei City, Miaoli County, Taichung and Keelung.

It has organized primaries in races where an incumbent DPP mayor or commissioner is leaving office, such as in Chiayi County.

The next local elections to choose city and county leaders are to be held on Nov. 28.