Incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who was previously elected in 2016, was eligible to seek for a second term.

In this 2020 Taiwanese legislative election, the DPP retained their majority in the legislature winning 61 seats, along with DPP's presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen reelected with a record breaking historical high vote count.

The newly established Taiwan People's Party received more than 5% of the popular vote in the party-list proportional representation category, winning 5 seats in the legislature and more critically the ability to directly nominate its own presidential candidate in the 2024 Taiwan presidential election, as opposed to needing petition from nearly 300,000 eligible voters (1.5% of total registered voters from the most recently held legislative election), which can be a costly and labor-intensive process.

In December 2019 The Diplomat reported that the People’s Republic of China was actively engaged in political warfare efforts to influence and disrupt the 2020 general election.

[2] Self-proclaimed former Chinese spy William Wang, who defected to Australia, claimed that the Chinese Communist Party wanted to stop Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen from being re-elected.