More than 40 percent of the public believes that the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) candidates will win in November’s mayoral and county commissioner elections, a poll published yesterday by the Taiwan NextGen Foundation showed.
According to the survey, 45.3 percent believe that the DPP’s candidates will win in the Nov. 24 nine-in-one elections, while 49.1 percent think that the party will win the majority of seats across the nation.
The poll showed that overall, 65.1 percent of respondents are satisfied with the administrative performance of the mayor or commissioner in their city or county of residence, while 24.8 percent are dissatisfied.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The highest average satisfaction rate of 67.1 percent was in cities or counties that have a DPP member as an administrative head, followed by 63 percent in areas with a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) head and 60.4 percent in areas with an independent head.
Asked about their voting preference, about 35.9 percent said they would consider voting for the DPP’s candidate, while 27.6 percent said they would consider the KMT’s candidate first.
However, 25.2 percent said they believe the KMT’s candidate will win.
A cross-analysis of the data showed that more than 41 percent intended to support the party that the mayor or commissioner of their city or county of residence is a member of.
In areas with independent administrative heads — Taipei and Hualien and Kinmen counties, the party support rates showed a fairly even distribution among the DPP (24.6 percent), the KMT (25.7 percent) and independents (24.5 percent).
The survey found that 33.6 percent would prefer voting for the DPP’s candidate, 28.5 percent for the KMT’s candidate and 4.9 percent would prefer independent candidates.
Former DPP spokeswoman Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶), who is to run in the party’s primary for a city councilor seat in Taipei’s Zhongzheng (中正) and Wanhua (萬華) districts, said it seems that most people will vote for DPP or KMT candidates.
However, about 8.4 percent of respondents said they would support third-party or independent candidates in the councilor elections and this combined force might have a big influence on the councilors’ votes, she said, adding that many of the candidates are aged between 25 and 35 and have entered politics through the Sunflower movement.
Foundation chairman Wang Zhin-sheng (王智盛) said that nearly 30 percent of pan-green camp supporters were unwilling to name their preferred party in the election, which might indicate that they are waiting to see the DPP’s nominee for the Taipei mayoral election.
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