The Kaohsiung mayoral election is getting more and more smokey. Sparks have been flying between the two sides recently, and even family issues have come to the fore. Lai Ruilong is currently playing steadily and still maintains the lead; Ke Zhien is trying to bring the tempo of the election back to "candidate characteristics" instead of the traditional blue-green showdown.
Lai Ruilong's advantage lies in his solid experience in city government and Congress, as well as the high-satisfaction support of five-star mayor Chen Qimai. Recently, he has frequently invited former President Tsai Ing-wen to Kaohsiung to support his campaign. He has gained a high voice and still maintains a certain degree of lead. However, the gap is unlikely to be more than 20% as shown in a certain poll. The local political arena is estimated to be around 10%. "How much can Chen Qimai's support be transferred? It will be a variable that affects the battle situation."
Recently, Green Camp auxiliary election cadres visited various places and found that the grassroots level is also very tense. Especially since the Democratic Progressive Party took power in Kaohsiung City, it has held two mayoral primaries, and the general elections that year were not easy. After Chen Ju won the primary election in 2006, she defeated her opponent Huang Junying by only 1,114 votes. In 2018, Chen Qimai defeated all the others in the primary election and even lost to Han Kuo-yu. This shows that "verbal unity can still cause rifts within the party in the primary election." Lai Ruilong must not be careful.
Ke Zhien, who strives to turn green spaces into blue skies, has the advantage that she has already been elected mayor once in 2022 and has gradually accumulated grassroots strength in the past four years. The local government believes that her signboards deliberately do not display the KMT party emblem, and her intention to win over middle voters is self-evident; disadvantages The green camp is fiercely fighting against the blue and white in the general budget and financial planning law amendments, resulting in a shortage of nearly 20 billion in Kaohsiung, which continues to be fermented in the public. In addition, the nightmare of South Korea Yu losing the presidential election is still there, and many voters have long said, "The mayor will never vote for the KMT again!"
It is an indisputable fact that Kaohsiung's electorate has a "greener than blue" sector. Under the aura of Chen Qimai's high satisfaction, how can Ke Zhien convince Kaohsiung citizens that "I am more capable of taking over than Lai Ruilong" and change the pace of the election campaign to emphasize "candidate characteristics" instead of the traditional blue-green duel? Only then can he have a chance to turn green land into blue sky.
With more than five months to go before the vote, Lai Ruilong takes "continuing Kaohsiung's glory and the crucial fourth leg" as the focus of his election campaign. The air campaign includes expressing political opinions through a virtual studio, while the land campaign uses the district chiefs and professional society system to gather momentum. He has also established district chief support clubs in the form of tea cake parties in each district to steadily promote the pace of victory through the most grassroots political network.
Ke Zhien went to each parliamentary constituency to hold symposiums, which were open to party members. Recently, nearly a thousand people participated in each session. In the future, he plans to hold lectures and medium and large-scale campaigns in various districts to further heat up the election. Big names including Taipei Mayor Chiang Wanan, Taichung Mayor Lu Xiuyan, New Taipei City Mayor Hou Youyi, Taoyuan Mayor Zhang Shanzheng, Legislative Yuan Hanguo-yu and other big names will come to Kaohsiung before the election to work hard to flip the election.
In the 2022 Kaohsiung mayoral election, Chen Qimai won 766,147 votes, beating Ke Zhien's 529,607 votes. The gap between the two sides was 236,540 votes. It is expected that the gap will be even closer this year.
