More than 60 percent of respondents in a poll said they were satisfied with Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) performance during her US visit, and more than 70 percent believed the trip would contribute positively to her presidential bid, Taiwan Brain Trust said yesterday.
“According to the results of our latest opinion poll, 64.4 percent of respondents said that they were satisfied with Tsai’s performance during the trip, with only 16.3 percent saying they were not satisfied,” Taiwan Brain Trust chairman Wu Rong-i (吳榮義) told a news conference in Taipei. “Moreover, 71.3 percent of respondents believed that the visit would have a positive impact on her presidential campaign, while only 19.9 percent disagreed.”
Meanwhile, 71.8 percent of respondents agreed with Tsai’s remarks about maintaining the cross-strait “status quo” during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
In addition, “67.6 percent of respondents agreed with Tsai’s promise to create a ‘consistent, predictable and sustainable cross-strait relationship,’ and 49.2 percent were confident that the DPP is capable of maintaining peaceful and stable cross-trait ties if it is elected to power,” Wu said.
The survey also pitted Tsai against potential Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rivals in the January presidential election — Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), New Taipei City Mayor and KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) — with Tsai consistently emerging as the winner.
According to poll numbers, Tsai would garner 55 percent of support against Hung’s 31.3 percent, 49.1 percent over Wang’s 38.4 percent, 52.5 percent versus Chu’s 37.1 percent and 68.4 percent against Wu’s 19.2 percent.
The poll was conducted last weekend with 1,085 valid samples from people aged 20 and above, who were randomly selected by telephone across the nation.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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