While the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is on track for large victories in the two southern municipalities, support remains divided in tightly fought Taipei and Sinbei races, DPP Secretary-General Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁) said yesterday.
Commenting on the party’s election prospects ahead of the Nov. 27 special municipality elections, Wu was upbeat on the latest DPP poll showing support for both parties had largely plateaued.
The DPP survey, released yesterday, put its candidate for Taipei City, Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), at 40.8 percent against Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) 39.3 percent.
In Sinbei City, the soon-to-be-renamed Taipei County and the nation’s most populous municipality, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) trailed her Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) opponent 39.1 percent to 40.3 percent.
Both races are statistically tied, as the margin of error was 3 percent.
The poll showed the difference between the DPP candidate in Greater Taichung, Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全), long seen as an underdog against popular Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強), had narrowed to within 5 percent, with Su at 35.1 percent against Hu’s 40.1 percent.
In Greater Tainan, the DPP said its candidate, William Lai (賴清德), maintained an overwhelming 25.4 point lead over KMT candidate Kuo Tien-tsai’s (郭添財) 25.9 percent.
Similarly, in the three-way race in Greater Kaohsiung, the party said Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) was expected to take close to half the vote, with the poll giving her 47.2 percent support against 12.5 percent for KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) and 25.6 percent for independent Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興).
The poll, which involved about 7,000 voters in the five municipalities, was conducted from Nov. 5 to Saturday.
According to DPP poll center director Chen Chun-lin (陳俊麟), the results factored in public opinion over the fallout from former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) prison sentence and controversy over TV host Cheng Hung-yi’s (鄭弘儀) outburst at an event.
“The poll shows … the races are in a very stable and consistent state,” Wu said. “Which party ends up winning the elections will depend largely on what it can do in the final 10 days.”
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