Voters in Taiwan will go to the polls on Saturday for an election that's being watched around the world.
Most of the attention is focused on the race for the presidency, but there's another important issue on election day.
Tsai Ing-wen has been president of Taiwan for the past eight years and her vice-president is the front-runner to succeed her.
But even if Lai Ching-te takes the top spot in this weekend's election, he's very likely to face a challenge his predecessor did not: a hostile legislature — or at least one that's not controlled by his political party.
The left-of-center Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, has been in power for the past 8 years in Taiwan — controlling not only the executive branch but also most of the seats in the 113-member legislature.
Lawmakers in the single-body legislature are elected every four years, which is the same timing and election cycle as Taiwan's presidential term.
And that adds another level of complexity to this election. As the DPP and its traditional opposition party, the right-of-center Kuomintang battle it out, a third party has entered the race.
And if neither of the established parties wins a parliamentary majority, that new group, the Taiwan People's Party, could wind up with an outsized degree of influence in the politics of Taiwan's next legislature.
