Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as party chair after her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) did poorly in local elections on Saturday.

The results, which she "humbly" accepts, required "deep introspection," Tsai told disappointed supporters Saturday night.

The President had tried to stylize the election as a referendum on the different China policies of the two most important parties.

The voters were not convinced.

Instead, local issues and candidates were probably decisive.

Voter turnout was just 59 percent.

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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The DPP lost control of two key cities, Taoyuan and Keelung, to the opposition National People's Party (KMT).

In addition, the DPP's hopes of winning the post of mayor in the capital Taipei were not fulfilled.

There, the KMT candidate, Chiang Wan-an, won by a clear margin.

According to his own statements, he is a great-grandson of former President Chiang Kai-shek.

This gives him additional prestige within the KMT.

However, the former business lawyer, who worked for a number of years in a law firm in America's Silicon Valley, only uses the great-grandfather card sparingly because many younger voters see Chiang Kai-shek as a dictator.

After being defeated by Communist troops, he fled China with more than a million followers in 1949 and established a military regime there.

A new party completes the political spectrum

43-year-old Chiang Wan-an will be Taipei's youngest-ever mayor.

He is considered a beacon of hope in the party, especially since the KMT has a hard time reaching younger voters.

This is because the party has so far clung to the long-term goal of unification with China, albeit not with a communist-ruled China.

However, most young Taiwanese do not see themselves as Chinese.

The DPP, founded in 1986, generally does worse in local elections than in national elections because it lacks local networks, especially in the north, says Anna Marti, office manager of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Taipei.

Tsai managed to win re-election in 2020, even though her party suffered a bitter defeat in the 2018 local elections.

After the local elections, all eyes are now on the selection of candidates for the presidential election in January 2024. After two terms in office, Tsai cannot run again.

The newly elected mayor of New Taipei, Hou You-yi, is considered a possible KMT candidate.

One of the winners of Saturday's election was the Taiwan People's Party (TPP), which was founded in 2019 and wants to establish itself as an alternative force.

She surprisingly won the mayoral post in Hsinchu.

So far, the competition between the DPP and the KMT has dominated political life, contributing to the fact that Taiwanese society is deeply divided.

A referendum to lower the minimum voting age from 20 to 18, which would have benefited the DPP in particular, failed to achieve the required majority.