Two polls released yesterday put President Chen Shui-bian (
The latest poll from Taiwan Thinktank, which commissioned the Shan Shui polling firm to conduct the survey, found that Chen had a 0.9 percent lead over Lien, with 40.4 percent support compared with Lien's 39.5 percent.
"It is the first time for Chen and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) to win support over 40 percent, which is Chen's highest ever performance rating," Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), a political analyst and an assistant fellow of politics at Academia Sinica, said yesterday.
"Meanwhile, support for Lien and his running mate [PFP Chairman] James Soong (宋楚瑜) has also risen, which means the two groups of presidential candidates are running neck and neck in the polls," Hsu said.
In other words, Hsu said, the percentage of the undecided voters had been reduced, falling to 20.1 percent. According to the poll, most undecided voters are young people.
About 22.1 percent of voters from 20 to 29 years of age said that they will not vote.
"Young voters' support will definitely be the cake that the candidates contend for," Hsu said.
Hsu added the rival camps have been courting young people by touting an all-volunteer military.
Hsu said the two camps would be working to cement current support and win over undecided voters.
He added that negative campaigning would be another critical factor in the election.
Hsu said that fugitive and former Tuntex Group chairman Chen Yu-hao's (陳由豪) accusations about Chen Shui-bian were an example. But he added that this incident had little impact on Chen Shui-bian's re-election since Chen Yu-hao failed to provide evidence of his claims.
The nationwide telephone poll of 1,126 people was taken from Thursday to Saturday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.92 percentage points.
Central Election Commission regulations state that election polls cannot be released less than 10 days before the vote.
A poll conducted by students at Shih Hsin University was also released yesterday.
The survey showed no significant difference in support for Chen and Lien. It put support for Chen at 27. 3 percent and support for Lien at 27.1 percent. About 30 percent of students were undecided.
However, about 38.8 percent of students said they will not vote in the presidential election and about 29.2 percent of students said they will not vote in the referendum.
The poll questioned 1,152 college students who studied in the north of the country.
Chen I-shen (陳儀深), a research fellow of the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica, said yesterday that society should examine why college students are indifferent to politics and why they have little desire to understand the society in which they live.
KMT Legislator Apollo Chen (
COSTLY TECH FAILURE: More than 25,000 files for nearly 8,000 students from 81 schools were lost when system administrators updated a server, the Ministry of Education said The academic records of 7,854 high-school students have been lost due to a hard-drive failure, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The records were being stored at National Chi Nan University, which was commissioned by the ministry’s K-12 Education Administration to host a computer server of student portfolios that universities could access to evaluate their applications. Under a program introduced in 2019 for high-school students starting that year, students are to create portfolios to be used for university applications, which include their grades, extracurricular activities and other information related to their character and achievements. System administrators discovered that files were missing when rebooting
CONFUSING RESULTS: A New Taipei City worker tested positive for COVID-19 in a rapid test and a PCR test, but negative in a traditional nucleic acid test, the CECC said Travelers from Bangladesh, Brazil and Peru are no longer required to quarantine at a government center, and from Saturday can choose to quarantine at hotels, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The three nations are no longer considered “key high-risk countries,” as their COVID-19 case numbers have continued to fall, the CECC said, adding that no travelers from these countries have been confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 in the past two months. The revised classification would allow travelers from the three countries to choose where they stay during their mandatory 14-day quarantine, although they would be required to pay
Paraguay, Belize, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, three of the 15 UN members that have official diplomatic ties with Taiwan, voiced support at the UN General Assembly on Friday for Taiwan’s inclusion in the UN. In a video played at the 76th session of the General Assembly in New York, Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benitez said that universality is a basic principle of the UN, and based on that principle, “we support the inclusion of Taiwan within the United Nations system.” Taiwan lost its UN seat in 1971, when most countries shifted recognition to Beijing. Belizian Prime Minister John Briceno on Friday attended
ONE NEW DOMESTIC CASE: The CECC confirmed the COVID-19 case based on an antibody test, despite other tests indicating that the woman was likely not infectious The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) would ease COVID-19 restrictions depending on the vaccination rate and other factors, but lowering the level 2 COVID-19 alert would require more careful consideration, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said yesterday. In its decision of when to lower the alert, the center would take into account Taiwan’s first-dose COVID-19 vaccination rate, with the aim to reach 60 percent, people’s compliance with disease prevention measures and the general COVID-19 situation in the nation, Chen told the CECC’s daily news conference. The center would take “a more rigorous approach” when making
RSS