The DPP and the KMT pointed to their own opinion polls yesterday to play up their prospects for next March's presidential election.
After the DPP released a poll showing the popularity of the ruling party and the KMT-PFP alliance on a par, President Chen Shui-bian (
A KMT survey, meanwhile, indicated that the pairing of KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) enjoys greater support than a Chen-Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) ticket.
According to the poll released by the DPP 36.6 percent of respondents support Chen, while 36.5 percent favor the Lien-Soong ticket.
During a meeting with DPP staff in Hualien, the president said that despite the survey, the KMT-PFP alliance suffers from a "black gold" image and relies on old politicians.
In contrast, he said, the DPP projects an image of reform and energy.
Chen appealed to supporters to help him to win another term and consolidate the nation's democratic development.
While the public generally believes the pan-blue alliance has an advantage in that it can draw votes from both Lien and Soong supporters, the DPP survey suggests otherwise.
Put together, Lien and Soong garnered 47.6 percent of the votes in the last presidential election, but their current combined popularity is only 36.5 percent, the survey said.
The mathematics of one plus one one equals two cannot necessarily be applied to politics, DPP officials said.
Chen Jun-lin (陳俊麟), director of the DPP's survey center, said the pan-blue camp's declining popularity stems from disappointment among Soong supporters that their leader settled for running for vice president.
In the 2000 election, Chen Shui-bian obtained 27 percent of the vote.
Chen Jun-lin believes the DPP has an advantage in the next election because it will be a one-on-one battle and because the party has more administrative resources at its disposal.
Floating voters are expected to be a deciding factor.
The DPP survey showed that Chen leading among this group. Twenty-eight percent of people without a political preference favor Chen and only 18 percent support Lien. But half of them remain undecided.
The survey also showed that Chen has more support from people over 40, while Lien is more popular among those aged 30 to 40.
Meanwhile, the KMT poll showed that the Lien-Soong ticket would defeat Chen-Lu bid for re-election.
The KMT's survey said 37 percent of respondents support Lien-Soong, while 25 percent favor Chen-Lu. It showed 23 percent support the KMT, compared with 19 percent support for the DPP.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift