Shaimaa Khalil
in Taipei

Chen Xian Zhong is a staunch DPP supporter - I met him when he stepped out of his tea shop briefly - to watch the ballot counting at the Hsin Fu temple which has been turned into a polling station.

He invites me to the tea shop which he has had for 45 years. He’s watching the media coverage very closely and every time the TV vote counts show the ruling DPP’s William Lai in the lead, he smiles.

I ask him what he wants from this election, what’s important to him.

“Democracy and freedom.” he said.

When asked if he is worried about China's reaction, he says: "Not at all".

”Taiwan is a free place - that’s why I’ve been able to do my business well - I want whoever comes to power to maintain Tawan’s values.”

Tessa Wong
in Taipei

Image source, BBC/Tessa Wong

There’s a festive atmosphere at the Kuomintang (KMT) victory rally at Banqiao stadium with pumping live music, a massive stage, and even food trucks.

But the enthusiasm of the organisers is not matched by the crowd turnout. Rows and rows of stools with Taiwan flags sit empty. The number of supporters seem to be as many as the journalists.

Some are unfazed. A woman dressed head to toe in tinsel, who has been a staple at KMT rallies, is dancing and waving a placard that says “victory”.

And on stage, emcees are trying to rally the supporters, despite the KMT falling behind the Democratic Progressive Party in the latest vote count for the presidential election.

“Add oil! We need to have faith,” they said.

Image source, BBC/Tessa Wong

Today is not just about who Taiwan's next president is. Voters are also choosing their legislature, which is known as the Legislative Yuan.

All 113 seats are at stake in this election.

None of the seats have been officially called as of this moment.

But three candidates have claimed victory in their respective seats. They are DPP's Lin Chun-hsien, the KMT's Chen Yu-chen and Chen Hsueh-sheng also from the KMT.

All three are incumbent legislators in their respective constituencies.

Everyone's watching this election. Even outside of counting centres, people in Taiwan are keeping a keen eye on live vote tallies.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, BBC News

While William Lai's current slim lead in the polls is largely in line with expectations, his vote share is likely to go up once the count from rural areas and southern Taiwan is fully accounted for, one analyst told the BBC.

"Generally speaking, judging from the polls before the polls closed about 10 days ago - we're looking at Lai shooting for roughly 40, low 40% or so of the vote share. At the moment, it looks like he's getting a little bit more than one third as well. So I think that's largely in line with expectations," Wen-Ti Sung of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub said.

Mr Sung also noted that early vote counts tend to happen in cities.

"Lai's party DPP tend to have a lot of strength in the more rural and more southern part of Taiwan. So when those do come in, I think it's a good chance that his vote share may go up just a bit more than what we're currently seeing as well."

Local media have reported on several cases of people being penalised for breaching voting rules.

In the northern city of Taoyuan, police said they punished a 72-year-old woman who brought her phone into the voting booth. She said she wanted to take a photo of her ballot to show her son.

In southern city of Kaohsiung, a woman whose young child accidentally tore up her ballot paper was referred to lcoal prosecutors.

And in the northeastern county of Yilan, a lot of voters complained that they were turned away for not wearing masks. Polling station officials later apologised for misunderstanding regulations.

According to Taiwan's regulations, people who violate voting rules could be fined or even jailed for up to a year.

Image source, Reuters

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
in Taipei

We are on our way to the headuqarters of the ruling Demoractic Progressive Party (DPP) but crowds have already begun gathering there, jugding from the pictures being ciruclated on local media WhatsApp groups.

The pictures from outside the opposition KMT's headquarters show it largely empty.

Tessa Wong
in Taipei

As we wait for the results, here's a quick reminder on the three parties and the crux of their campaigns.

In the last few days, all three parties released adverts in a final push for votes – and this is what they tell us.

The Democratic People’s Party is pushing a message of continuity.

Their first ad showed outgoing president Tsai Ing-wen driving in a car with candidate William Lai before letting him take the wheel. Another ad, showing people moving backwards, warns young voters that progress achieved under the DPP could be rolled back if they lose power.

The Kuomintang is banking on convincing voters that this election is a choice between war and peace. In their advert, which juxtaposed peaceful shots of Taiwan’s landscape with war imagery, candidate Hou Yu-ih is depicted as a heroic figure, standing on a cliff watching over Taipei.

The Taiwan People’s Party positions itself as the alternative to the two main parties with its slogan“take down the blue and green” - a reference to the other parties’ colours. Their advert shows their candidate Ko Wen-je hard at work on the campaign trail while the voiceover extols him for“setting off a social movement that’s changed Taiwan’s political culture”.

Image source, Getty Images

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
in Taipei

It’s close and almost exactly as the polls have been saying for the last month: Vice-president William Lai is holding a 4.5% lead.

It was close in 2000 and also in 2004, when Lai's ruling DPP beat the KMT by less than half a percent.

Image source, Getty Images

As the counting of ballots gets underway, the DPP's William Lai has taken a slim lead in the polls.

Unofficial results are expected by this evening.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
in Taipei

We don't have official tallies yet but all the major TV stations are putting the ruling DPP's William Lai, the current vice-president, ahead by about 4%.

This looks pretty much as we thought it would except that Ko Wen-je - who has pitched himself an alternative to the traditional choices - Lai and KMT's Hou Yu-ih - is doing a bit better than expected.

Opinion polls were showing him at around 26%, but early results show him at 29%.

The gap between Lai (37%) and Hou (33%) is staying relatively stable, which still points towards a Lai win.

On the other side of the Taiwan Strait, the elections are not only being closely watched by authorities - ordinary people are also following with interest.

"Taiwan election" was a trending topic this morning on Weibo, China's equivalent of X. But censors acted quickly, stopping the hashtag from appearing on any charts, making most posts on this topic unsearchable.

But people are still still commenting and posting nontheless, and the opinions are somewhat divided. Many people are repeating Beijing's stance - in support of unification and opposing Taiwan independence.

"The motherland will unify and must unify," a Weibo post liked more than 700 times reads.

But some are also using this as a chance to vent. "Why don't we have [sic] election, I want to vote too," another comment reads.

"Why don't us on the mainland have this model, I've never seen any polling station and have only seen news about who are appointed as officials, and I don't even know who thy are," another comment, liked nearly 100 times reads.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
in Taipei

I have been in four classrooms here at the Xinyi District Elementary School, where they are tallying votes.

In two of them, the main opposition Kuomintang and its candidate Hou Yu-ih are leading by a substantial margin.

In the other two, the other opposition candidate Ko Wen-je is ahead, by perhaps a less substantial margin.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) does not seem to be winning. It’s not surprising because this is not a DPP district at all.

Of course, it's too early to tell and this is only one polling station.

But this is a KMT stronghold. They should be cleaning up in this district. If this was a two party race they would be well ahead.

It looks to me as if Ko Wen-je is getting a substantial number of votes in this district.

And he is probably taking them largely from the KMT - and that means, as expected, the third party candidate (in this case Ko) could decide the election.

This is what the KMT has been saying to voters - a vote for Ko is a vote that will allow DPP to win, because Ko's support will likely cut into the KMT's strongholds.

Image source, Getty Images

Shaimaa Khalil
BBC News, Taipei

The BBC's Shaimaa Khalil explains the process of how votes are counted as officials work at a polling station at Hsin Fu Temple in Taipei.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
in Taipei

The votes in Taiwan are counted by hand in each polling station, and then tallied across the island.

Here, at the polling station in Xinyi, one person pulls a ballot paper out of the box, hands it to another who holds it up and calls out the vote.

Then another person standing at a whiteboard repeats the vote and adds it to the relevant column. This is being repeated in four other classrooms at this school - which was turned into a polling station for today's election.

This is being done by two sets of people because remember - the Taiwanese are voting for both a president and a legislature.

All three presidential candidates have gained more than 1 million votes so far, according to local media outlets.

Lai Ching-te is the front runner at the moment, leading the polls with around 37% of the votes cast.

Following him is Hou Yu-ih who has around 33% of the votes, and Ko Wen-je is trailing behind with around 29% of the votes.

About 70.6% of the voting-eligible population in the capital city Taipei turned out for the election, according to Taiwanese news channel SET News.

The same proportion of voters in Taipei cast their ballots in the last election in 2020.

Watch how officials are counting ballots at the Hsin Fu Temple in Taipei.

Benny Lu
Reporting from Kaohsiung

Ballot counting has started.

I am at a polling station in Sanmin district, Kaohsiung, a stronghold of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

There are about 1,100 registered voters and more than 860 people have cast their ballots here.

However, many DDP supporters still think that the turnout is lower than expected and are worried about how this will affect the chances of their candidate William Lai.

Image source, BBC Chinese

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
in Taipei

The counting has begun here in Xinyi district which is a wealthy district of Taipei - traditionally a stronghold of the main oppostion Kuomintang or KMT.

Not surprisingly, the KMT's Hou Yu-ih is well in the lead here, but Ko Wen-je from another opposition party, the Taiwan People's Party, is also getting a lot of votes here.

William Lai, the ruling party's candidate, was trailing well behind, but he has now overtaken Ko. KMT is still well ahead.