Independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) continued to hold a lead over his rivals, including the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Sean Lien (連勝文), the latest media poll showed.
A public opinion poll published by the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) showed 43.69 percent of respondents favoring Ko over Lien, who had 23.83 percent. Independent candidate Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄) garnered 8.2 percent, while 24.23 percent of respondents gave no opinion.
Asked which candidate they think would win the Taipei race, 37.24 percent picked Ko, 29.79 percent said Lien, 2.09 percent chose Shen and 30.88 had no opinion.
Asked to comment on the survey, Ko told reporters that the results looked fine, but he has to continue working on his election campaign.
“We have seen the surveys conducted by media outlets and our office, and they both show that an increasing number of people believe that Ko will win the race. This is an indication that our campaign is moving in the right direction,” said Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏), Ko’s campaign office spokesman.
Meanwhile, Chien Chen-yu (錢震宇), spokesperson for Sean Lien’s campaign, said: “It is important for Lien to meet with people at the grassroots level and listen to their voices. Lien wants to understand the issues and problems that concern the public and find solutions for them.”
He added that Lien was more concerned with presenting concrete city administration policies to win public support rather than what the surveys show.
“Lien has compared the campaign to a basketball game. Though he is behind by 20 points in the first half, he can reverse the deficit in the second half,” Chien Chen-yu said.
The survey of Taipei residents aged 20 and above was carried out by the Liberty Times’ Public Opinion Survey on Friday last week, Monday and Tuesday. It gather 1,055 valid results, and has a margin of error of 3.02 percentage points.
Additional reporting by Kuo Chia-an
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