Print

Mail

wiki links

KMT says it will stay largest party in the legislature

If the KMT's polls are to believed, the party will remain the largest in the legislature after the Dec. 1 elections.

According to the KMT, the party will hang on to roughly 90 seats in the lawmaking body after the polls -- down from 113 today.

Last year, KMT polls consistently showed its presidential candidate Lien Chan (連戰) sweeping into power.

But Lien placed a distant third behind the DPP's Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and the People First Party's James Soong (宋楚瑜) -- prompting critics to say that along with power the KMT had lost its grip on political reality.

"The KMT is expected to grab up to 90 seats in the 225-member legislature," Chao Shou-po (趙守博), director-general of the party's Organizational Development Committee, said yesterday.

Chao said the estimate was based on polls conducted by 12 separate survey companies.

According to the KMT's numbers, the support rate for the party is running at 25 percent, with the DPP trailing at 22 percent and the PFP farther behind at 15 percent.

The Taiwan Solidarity Union and the New Party scored 2 percent and 1 percent, respectively, according to the KMT-commissioned polls.

Chao maintained that the KMT is outperforming the DPP by 3 percentage points, though that number is within the margin of error.

He also said a handful of rival candidates had signaled their desire to ally with the KMT after the elections.

"It's the KMT rather than the DPP that enjoys the most support," the KMT official said, estimating that its rival would win less than 85 seats in the Dec. 1 polls.

On Tuesday, the DPP released an internal survey putting the party ahead of the KMT with a support rating of between 33 percent and 35 percent.

Chao also painted a rosy picture for the KMT's prospects in county commissioner and city mayoral races. He said the party's candidates enjoy comfortable leads in Taichung City and Taoyuan, Hualien and Yunlin Counties and the offshore areas of Penghu and Kinmen.

Chao also derided the DPP's numbers, suggesting that the party released inflated poll figures in a gambit to influence the election's outcome.

"The lack of confidence in its own showing has prompted the DPP to make a series of deceitful statements," Chao said.

But DPP Secretary-general Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁) said yesterday that it was the KMT that was being deceitful, challenging the KMT to disclose the names of the 12 pollsters that conducted the party's survey.

"The KMT should say which 12 companies are responsible for the survey, so the public can check the accuracy of the statistics," Wu said.

Wu said the KMT had faked opinion polls when seeking to nominate its candidate for Kaohsiung County commissioner.

"The KMT claimed it hired three separate pollsters to gauge the popularities of two aspirants for the nomination -- but all denied being asked to perform the task," the DPP official said.

The PFP also released poll numbers yesterday, saying it was confident it could double its number of seats in the legislature.

"The PFP, poised to win 40 to 45 seats, will emerge as the biggest winner in the legislative polls," PFP Secretary-general David Chung (鍾榮吉) told Hong Kong reporters yesterday.

Chung also said he thought the KMT would remain the largest party in the legislature with 85 seats, thanks to its hefty war chest.
This story has been viewed 1706 times.