The 4th mayoral election in Taoyuan City presents a battle between blue and green. Kuomintang Zhang Shanzheng has many advantages such as being in office. The campaign team adopts the campaign strategy of "municipal priority, separate advance and joint attack", hoping to steadily move towards victory. Huang Shijie has set the campaign theme of "Taoyuan, start moving" and continues to criticize issues such as the stagnation of construction in the Chang City Government. He must use the appeal of "breaking through the bottleneck of Taoyuan development" to find the winning formula for the challenger.
In 2022, Zhang Shanzheng won with more than 557,000 votes and a vote rate of 52.02%. In addition, the Kuomintang won 6 regional legislators in Taoyuan City in 2024 and survived last year's "general recall". Blue supporters are confident that "blue is greater than green" in Taoyuan, which is Zhang's basic advantage in this year's election. Zhang Shanzheng divides the battle zones by regional legislator districts, and six legislators are responsible for supervising each district, which can take into account the strengthening of regional integration and campaign coordination.
Zhang Shanzheng has huge administrative resources and can promote his political achievements through groundbreaking, opening, completion and other activities. This is an important advantage. The campaign headquarters has even set a campaign strategy of "municipal priority". Chairman Huang Mingong once said that even during the election period, Zhang will still stick to his municipal duties and give back to the citizens with actual results. As for the election, the campaign team will divide the responsibilities so that municipal and election affairs can complement each other.
Challenger Huang Shijie’s biggest advantage, and also the key to victory, is that he “can criticize Taoyuan’s stagnant municipal construction and low administrative efficiency without any baggage.” Taking the issue of TSMC’s factory construction as an example, Huang Shijie questioned Zhang Shanzheng’s lack of concrete progress in TSMC’s entry plan in the past three years, and even intended to harvest the achievements of the central government and the Zhuke Administration. As long as Huang successfully resonates with supporters and creates Zhang’s image of “turning in a blank,” he is expected to quickly increase his momentum and force Zhang to no longer “low-key” in the challenge.
Looking back on 2018, Zheng Wencan of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected mayor of Taoyuan with more than 552,000 votes and a vote rate of 53.46%. The vote rate was even higher than that of Zhang Shanzheng four years later. Green camp supporters believe that "Taoyuan, where blue has traditionally been greater than green, has quietly changed after the DPP has been in power for 8 years." Huang Shijie only needs to succeed. The successful integration of the Democratic Progressive Party's "Taoyuan Team" effectively carries out joint operations, focusing on transportation, industrial and other policies, and collaborating with the central government to come up with beef that better meets the needs of the public. It also demonstrates its ability to be a top student through a "straight ball showdown" debate. It will definitely have a great chance to replicate the battle in 2014 when Zheng Wencan defeated the highly popular Wu Zhiyang.
