Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has taken a small lead over President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) ahead of the presidential election, in a poll by a local TV stationS.
In the poll released yesterday by TVBS, Tsai and her running mate, Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全), lead their Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) counterparts, Ma and Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), at 47.3 percent versus 45.8 percent.
Poll results ahead of the Jan. 14 presidential election were calculated in accordance with both decided voters and about 14 percent of undecided voters, said the station, which is generally perceived as sympathetic to the KMT.
In decided voter support, the Ma-Wu ticket enjoyed only a narrow advantage over the Tsai-Su ticket, at 39 percent versus 38 percent. People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) received 9 percent support, the poll suggested.
The results gave Tsai the lead in the presidential race over Ma for the first time in the station’s polls since May, when she was formally nominated as the DPP presidential candidate.
In the station’s poll on May 30, Ma led Tsai with 46 percent against her 42 percent. In the previous poll in September, support for Ma remained at about 46 percent, while Tsai received only 38 percent support.
Commenting on the TVBS poll, Ma’s re-election campaign office spokesperson Ma Wei-kuo (馬瑋國) said that the camp took every survey result into consideration. She declined to say whether the falling support rate for the Ma-Wu ticket reflected public disappointment with recent government performance.
She said the camp would stick to its campaign strategy and continue to promote Ma and the government’s achievements in the past three years ahead of the January vote.
Meanwhile, according to the latest information from xFuture, a Web site with a platform similar to a stock market exchange that allows users to predict the results of future events, Tsai’s lead over Ma is widening.
On Thursday, the exchange predicted Tsai would receive 49.9 percent of votes, Ma would get 46.1 percent and Soong would take 7.5 percent. On the probability of winning the election, the exchange gave Tsai 47 percent, Ma 42.8 percent and Soong 12.4 percent.
The exchange last Saturday predicted that Tsai would receive 49.5 percent of votes, Ma would get 48.3 percent and Soong would take 7.5 percent. On the probability of an electoral victory, the exchange gave Tsai 44.8 percent, Ma 41.5 percent and Soong 13.5 percent.
According to National Chengchi University’s Prediction Markets Center, prediction markets efficiently collect effective information through a futures or stock-trading mechanism that relies on the wisdom of the public, who buy and sell contracts of future events on the market.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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