President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) lead over his main rival, Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), ahead of the presidential election next year has risen slightly, a new Global Views poll shows.
Conducted early last week amid speculation that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate would choose Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) as his running mate, the survey found that Ma’s lead had risen from 0.3 percentage points to 4.9 percentage points, while support for Tsai had dropped 2.3 percentage points.
“Voters are starting to better recognize the president’s achievements in the past three years,” said Lee Chia-fei (李佳霏), a spokesperson for Ma’s campaign. “We believe that trend will continue.”
Previous media polls have shown the two candidates virtually tied in popular support, but the Global Views survey found that Ma was now up to 41.2 percent and Tsai down to 36.3 percent — possibly reflecting what the poll suggested were continued voter anxiety about cross-strait relations and the uncertainties that a return of the DPP into the Presidential Office would create.
One-third of likely voters said they believed cross-strait relations would “improve” if Ma won a second term, while only 7.7 percent said the same for Tsai.
Conversely, 30.4 percent said that relations would “worsen” if Tsai were elected.
Despite the numbers, DPP officials said the analysis section of the survey, which takes a number of factors into consideration, still gave Tsai a higher chance of being elected — likely because of an increased turnout from pan-green voters, DPP spokesperson Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said.
The analysis section showed that Tsai would likely take 51.8 percent of the vote in January against 48.2 percent for Ma. Tsai’s lead increased 0.3 points, while Ma’s fell 0.3 points.
Railing against the main Global Views poll, Tsai accused the magazine of “cooperating with the KMT to try and show one thing — that my support ratings are falling.”
The public should take the survey “lightly,” she said.
A DPP spokesperson had suggested during last month’s release of another Global Views poll that its results were “consistent” with an unreleased DPP poll seen internally by the party.
However, yesterday’s survey still gave the president a high disapproval rating, although the number showed a drop from last month.
His disapproval rating still topped his approval rating by 16 percentage points, 50.8 percent to 34.3 percent respectively.
The poll was conducted from June 13 to June 15 with a sample base of 1,100 voters. The margin of error is 3 percent, 19 times out of 20.
The presidential election will be held concurrently with the legislative elections on Jan. 14.
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