The latest newspaper poll showed that while New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) still leads the municipality’s mayoral race with 42.3 percent of support against his Democratic Progressive Party rival Yu Shyi-kun’s 32.1 percent, that lead has been narrowed by about 10 percent by a surge of support for Yu compared with the poll done in September.
Chu has recently attended various groundbreaking ceremonies for major construction projects, such as the Tamsui light-rail system, the Tamkang Bridge and the Taipei MRT’s Minsheng-Xizhi Line, in what has been interpreted as an effort to showcase them as election sweeteners. The projects have been panned by Yu as “fake Potemkin villages” for “finagling votes.”
According to the latest survey commissioned by the Chinese-language Apple Daily newspaper and conducted by Shih Hsin University, 42.3 percent of the respondents said they support Chu, 32.1 percent backed Yu, 0.7 percent back independent candidate Lee Ching-shun (李進順) and 24.9 percent remain undecided.
Photo: Lee Ya-wen, Taipei Times
The Apple Daily reported that Chu has lost 3 percentage points in the latest poll on the Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections, while Yu has gained nearly 10, and the number of respondents who said they are undecided has diminished from 31.4 to 24.9 percent.
National Taiwan University political science professor Ger Yeong-kuang (葛永光) said in the report that the narrowing gap reflects the DPP’s deeply rooted strength in New Taipei City.
Whereas Chu has a high media exposure rate and has done a pretty good job in public relations and secured achievements on his political resume that have taken him to the level of “a future president,” Yu has been not good at rallying support and has relatively weak “explosive power,” which have are reflected in the poll numbers, Ger said.
Photo: CNA
The professor attributed the lagging poll numbers on Chu’s part to the mayor’s frequent visits to other cities and counties to stump for other hopefuls, which could make voters believe that Chu already has enough votes to be re-elected.
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