The DPP said yesterday that opinion polls show the party running neck and neck with the KMT.
The polls estimate that both the DPP and the KMT could secure over 80 legislative seats each and that the People First Party (PFP) would be able to win 30 to 35 seats.
The DPP said it does not believe the KMT will be able to win more than 90 legislative seats as the party's chairman, Lien Chan (
Hsieh added that the DPP beat the KMT by over two percentage points in terms of overall popularity, saying that the two parties garnered 35 percent and 33 percent respectively amongst respondents who said they intended to vote. The polls also found the KMT's support in agricultural counties in central and southern Taiwan to be decreasing while that of the PFP in the country's metropolitan districts was on the rise.
The DPP said that PFP party Chairman James Soong (
Earlier DPP polls showed the newly-established Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) was only projected to win five legislative seats. However, yesterday's polls indicated that the TSU's performance would be better than anticipated and that they could be expected to win enough votes to cross the five-percent threshold. By that estimation, the TSU would likely be allotted seats for legislators-at-large.
Hsieh yesterday said the TSU has a very diverse base of support and that it might steal steal votes from both the KMT and the DPP, dismissing arguments that the TSU would only siphon off DPP votes.
Prospects for the New Party were not promising. In the polls released yesterday only three percent of respondents said they would vote for the party.
Around nine percent of those polled who said they intended to vote supported independent candidates or that they had yet to decide for whom to vote.
As for local government races, the DPP said that it is still in the lead in 12 counties.
The DPP yesterday reiterated the importance of the DPP government's crackdown on vote-buying, saying that the justice ministry's efforts have successfully cut down election-related events sponsored by candidates.
The polls found that President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) new book The Premier Voyage of the Century (世紀首航), had not had any impact to the elections.
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