Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) would lead her Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) opponent, Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), by nearly 30 percentage points if they are the only two participants in next year’s presidential election, according to a poll released by the Taiwan Thinktank yesterday.
The survey predicted that Tsai would garner 54.2 percent of votes against Hung’s 24.6 percent if they were to compete one-on-one in January’s election.
While Tsai’s support would decline to 43.8 percent if People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) enters the race, she would still maintain a wide margin against Sung’s 21.7 percent and Hung’s 21.6 percent.
The survey was released as the KMT confirmed Hung as its presidential candidate during its party congress in Taipei yesterday afternoon.
Meanwhile, in regional legislative elections, the survey showed that the DPP enjoyed the highest amount of support at 27.8 percent, followed by the KMT with 20.3 percent, the third political force with 5.2 percent and the PFP with 4.3 percent.
Support for the DPP increased to 35.6 percent when respondents were asked which party they would cast a party vote for, while the KMT and PFP received 24.6 percent and 9.2 percent respectively.
Commenting on the results, Soochow University associate professor of political science Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) — a member of the recently formed New Power Party (NPP) — said Soong’s perceived willingness to run for president has greatly boosted the momentum for his party.
“However, the third political force’s failure to present a presidential candidate could lead to them being left out or marginalized in the upcoming race. It is vital that they focus on issues conducive to heating up the legislative elections,” Hsu said.
Asked to rate their level of support for Taiwanese independence on a scale from zero to 10 — zero signifying a desire for immediate cross-strait unification and 10 for immediate independence — respondents returned an average score of 5.8.
Respondents were of the opinion that Tsai is leaning toward independence, as reflected by the score of 6.4 they gave her, while Soong and Hung received 4.4 and 3.4 respectively.
In addition, about 62.7 percent of those polled believed that Soong could maintain the cross-strait “status quo,” while 60.1 percent said they were more confident in Tsai’s ability to do so.
Meanwhile, 40.4 percent of respondents said Hung was favoring unification with China.
Political affiliation did not seem to be a factor when asked about allowing one political party to control both the Presidential Office and the Legislative Yuan, with 52.7 percent of those polled being against it, while 36.5 percent were in favor.
“The results of the poll could be due to President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) lackluster performance and the legislative chaos that occurred during his time in office, despite the KMT being fully in control of both branches of the government,” Taiwan Thinktank deputy executive director Lai I-chung (賴怡忠) said.
The telephone-based poll collected 1,112 valid samples and was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday last week. It has a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday criticized the nuclear energy referendum scheduled for Saturday next week, saying that holding the plebiscite before the government can conduct safety evaluations is a denial of the public’s right to make informed decisions. Lai, who is also the chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), made the comments at the party’s Central Standing Committee meeting at its headquarters in Taipei. ‘NO’ “I will go to the ballot box on Saturday next week to cast a ‘no’ vote, as we all should do,” he said as he called on the public to reject the proposition to reactivate the decommissioned
US President Donald Trump on Friday said that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) told him China would not invade Taiwan while Trump is in office. Trump made the remarks in an interview with Fox News, ahead of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “I will tell you, you know, you have a very similar thing with President Xi of China and Taiwan, but I don’t believe there’s any way it’s going to happen as long as I’m here. We’ll see,” Trump said during an interview on Fox News’ Special Report. “He told me: ‘I will never do
The Legislative Yuan yesterday approved an aid and recovery package authorizing the government to allocate up to NT$60 billion (US$1.99 billion) for regions hit by Typhoon Danas and subsequent torrential rains last month. Proposed by the Executive Yuan on Aug. 7, the bill was passed swiftly after ruling and opposition lawmakers reached a consensus in inter-party talks on relief funding and assistance for disaster-stricken areas. The package increases the government’s spending cap from the originally proposed NT$56 billion to NT$60 billion, earmarked for repairing and rebuilding infrastructure, electricity systems, telecommunications and cable TV networks, cultural heritage sites and other public facilities.
FLEXIBLE FORCE: Only about 10 percent of small drones reach their target, an expert said, which is why it is important to make it easier to procure large numbers of drones The military is planning to recategorize military drones as “consumables/munitions,” rather than as aircraft, to speed up the procurement process, the army said yesterday. The Army Command Headquarters said the decision was made because drones, like munitions, need to be rapidly replaced, and thus should be categorized as consumables/munitions “to meet the army’s practical needs.” The headquarters’ confirmation came after the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) early yesterday reported that the army was about to make the classification change based on the example of the US, which is Taiwan’s biggest arms provider. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced a
RSS