The latest poll shows the New Taipei mayoral race has become a tight contest, with Su Chiao-hui leading Lee Ssu-chuan by a narrow margin — a warning sign for the Kuomintang.

• Su Chiao-hui has 38.2% support, a slim win over Lee Ssu-chuan's 37.1%, a gap of just 1.1 percentage points.
• Only about 60% of Taiwan People's Party supporters would vote for Lee Ssu-chuan, with nearly 20% shifting to Su Chiao-hui — a sign that the fallout from the collapse of KMT-TPP cooperation in Zhubei is spilling over into New Taipei.
• Within the TPP, the view is that Lee Ssu-chuan has not received the KMT's full backing, and that the party's factions are out of step with one another, leaving the campaign without unified direction.
• Huang Kuo-chang and Ko Wen-je are working to cool tensions and are expected to appear at campaign events for Lee Ssu-chuan in early October, while the TPP will also step up its online and media offensive.
• Hsinchu County is likewise in trouble, with Cheng Chao-fang overtaking Hsu Hsin-ying in the polls by more than six percentage points; losing both Hsinchu County and New Taipei would be the KMT's worst result in its history.

Outlook: With just over sixty days until the nine-in-one local elections, whether the KMT and the TPP can genuinely come together will directly decide the outcome in New Taipei and Hsinchu County.