Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Keelung mayoral candidate Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) remains ahead of his rivals in the run-up to the nine-in-one elections on Nov. 29, with 36.39 percent of voters supporting him, compared with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hopeful Hsieh Li-kung’s (謝立功) 16.24 percent, the latest poll by the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) showed.
Independent candidate Huang Ching-tai (黃景泰), the Keelung City Council Speaker whose KMT nomination was revoked by the KMT in July after a judicial inquiry into Huang’s role in several real-estate development projects, trailed with 10.86 percent support. Huang was detained in September for allegedly accepting bribes amounting to NT$10 million (US$334,000) to act as a middleman dispensing bribes ranging between NT$200,000 and NT$500,000 to his fellow councilors to sway decisions on a road expansion project.
Even though Lin’s approval rating suffered a marginal drop compared with last month’s 38.25 percent, his favorability ratings hit 52.53 percent, a record high, followed by Hsieh’s 5.59 percent and Huang’s 4.75 percent.
However, 34.81 percent of respondents said they were undecided, the poll showed.
In response to the poll, Lin said the combined support ratings of Hsieh and Huang in recent polls failed to match the KMT’s performance during previous mayoral elections, indicating that voters do not believe in Premier Jiang Yi-huah’s (江宜樺) commitment to policy reform for the city.
Meanwhile, Hsieh’s spokesman Lo Chu-tung (羅楚東) said the decline in Lin’s ratings stemmed from his often-challenged policies.
“Although Lin has shunned questions about his policies, that does not help to cover up their deep-seated impracticality. I believe that people will come to terms with the fact that he lacks clearly-defined goals,” Lo said.
The telephone poll, funded by the Liberty Times and conducted between Wednesday and Frida using random dialing, collected 1,022 valid survey samples of Keelung residents older than 20 years of age, with a margin of error of 3.22 percentage points.
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