Public opinion polls released yesterday showed huge differences between results, with one showing the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) presidential tickets running neck-and-neck, while another suggested a margin of difference of about 20 percentage points.
The opinion polls were conducted after DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Friday announced the choice of DPP Secretary-General Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) as her running mate for the January presidential election.
The DPP’s poll showed 44 percent of respondents supporting the pairing of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) with Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), while 43.6 percent supported Tsai and Su, DPP polling center director Chen Chun-lin (陳俊麟) said. Tsai’s support rate among those who expressed a strong likelihood of voting led Ma’s by 2.4 percent, Chen added.
In the same poll, 50.9 percent of respondents said Su’s selection was a plus for Tsai, while only 32.3 percent said Wu would be a good complement for Ma’s re-election bid.
In the survey, 56.8 percent of respondents said they liked Su as a vice-presidential candidate, while 40.2 percent preferred Wu. However, 46.7 percent of respondents said they disliked Wu, Chen said.
The poll collected 967 samples and has a 3.2 percent margin of error. Half of the samples were mobile phone users, Chen said, as a lot of people were traveling to their hometowns ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival long weekend when the poll was conducted.
Meanwhile, a poll conducted by the Chinese-language China Times showed that 44 percent of its respondents supported the Ma-Wu ticket, 10 percentage points higher than the Tsai-Su ticket.
If People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) enters the race, Ma would still lead Tsai by 7 percentage points, with Soong receiving 14 percent of support, the survey showed.
Su would be a plus, according to 26 percent of those polled by the China Times, with 38 percent saying the selection of Su as Tsai’s running mate would not have an impact on her campaign.
The China Times’ survey collected 1,013 samples and has a 3.1 percent margin of error.
However, a poll by the Chinese-language Apple Daily showed the Tsai-Su ticket enjoying a substantial lead over the Ma-Wu ticket, with 51.3 percent against 30.7 percent, while 13.3 percent of respondents were undecided.
The Apple Daily polled 466 valid responses.
Ma’s campaign office yesterday accused the DPP of manipulating polls for electoral purposes and said the KMT would not publish polls it conducted.
“Unlike the DPP, which always uses its polls as a campaign tool, the KMT only uses internal polls for our own reference,” Ma’s campaign office spokesperson Ma Wei-kuo (馬瑋國) said.
She said the KMT’s surveys have shown the Ma-Wu ticket steadily leading the polls against the Tsai-Su pairing, but the party would not make public the exact poll results for campaign purposes.
KMT spokesperson Lai Su-ju (賴素如) said the KMT took any poll results as a reference, but would not change its campaign strategies because of ups and downs in support for Ma and Wu.
Additional reporting by Mo Yan-chih
LEVERAGE: China did not ‘need to fire a shot’ to deny Taiwan airspace over Africa when it owns ‘half the continent’s debt,’ a US official said, calling it economic warfare The EU has raised concerns about overflight rights following the delay of President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned state visit to the Kingdom of Eswatini after three African nations denied overflight clearance for his charter at the last minute. Taiwanese allies Paraguay and Saint Kitts and Nevis, as well as several US lawmakers and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) condemned China for allegedly pressuring the countries. Lai was scheduled to fly directly to Taiwan’s only African ally from yesterday to Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession and his 58th birthday, but Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar suddenly revoked
The final batch of 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks purchased from the US arrived at Taipei Port last night and were transported to the Armor Training Command in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), completing the military’s multi-year procurement of 108 of the tanks. Starting at 12:10am today, reporters observed more than a dozen civilian flatbed trailers departing from Taipei Port, each carrying an M1A2T tank covered with black waterproof tarps. Escorted by military vehicles, the convoy traveled via the West Coast Expressway to the Armor Training Command, with police implementing traffic control. The army operates about 1,000 tanks, including CM-11 Brave Tiger
China on Wednesday teased in a video an aircraft carrier that could be its fourth, and the first using nuclear power, while making an allusion to Taiwan and vowing to further build up its islands, as it looks to boost maritime power, secure resources and bolster territorial claims. The video, issued on the eve of the 77th founding anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, featured fictional officers with names that are homophones of three commissioned aircraft carriers, the Liaoning (遼寧), Shandong (山東) and Fujian (福建). Titled Into the Deep, it showed a 19-year-old named “Hejian” (何劍) joining the group, sparking
BIG YEAR: The company said it would also release its A12 chip the same year to keep a ‘reliable stream of new silicon technologies’ flowing to its customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its newest A13 chip is to enter volume production in 2029 as the chipmaker seeks to hold onto its tech leadership and demand for next-generation chips used in artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance-computing (HPC) and mobile applications. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, also unveiled its A12 chip at its annual technology symposium in Santa Clara, California. The A12 chip, which features TSMC’s super-power-rail technology to provide backside power delivery for AI and HPC applications, is also to enter volume production in 2029, a year after the scheduled release of the A14 chip. The technology moves
RSS