HONG KONG, January 13. /TASS/. Lai Ching-te, a member of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is leading in the island’s presidential election, according to the vote count by the Taiwanese television channel TVBS.

Based on the initial vote counting results, Lai has so far scored 854,500 votes. He is now trailed by Hou You-yi from the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party who already has 736,650 votes. Ko Wen-je from the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) is running third with 666,060 votes.

By this time, 2.26 mln ballots have been processed after 19.5 million out of Taiwan’s 23.5 million residents cast their votes. No data about voter turnout has been available yet.

Voting in Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections took place from 8:00 a.m. local time (0:00 GMT) on Saturday to 4 p.m. (8:00 a.m. GMT).