A report released yesterday showed Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) polling far ahead of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presumptive candidate, with a margin of nearly 20 percentage points.
The survey, conducted by the Taiwan Opinion Poll Association, showed Tsai garnering the support of 43.1 percent of respondents against Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu’s (洪秀柱) 24.2 percent.
Among respondents aged 20 to 29, 55 percent said they would vote for Tsai, while 17 percent favored Hung.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Should People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) join the presidential race on Jan. 16, Tsai would still lead with a support rate of 41.4 percent, followed by Hung with 21 percent and Soong with 14.3 percent.
Assuming only Tsai and Hung run for the nation’s top office, 22 percent of respondents who voted for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), of the KMT, in the 2012 presidential election said they would shift their support to Tsai, while 48 percent would back Hung and a high 30 percent had no answer, the survey showed.
Should it be a three-way race with Soong, 18 percent of those who voted for Ma would pick Tsai, 20 percent would support Soong and 42 percent would vote for Hung, with 19 percent undecided.
Be it a two-way or a three-way contest, the poll shows that less than 50 percent of respondents who voted for Ma said they would keep supporting the KMT presidential candidate in next year’s election.
The results of the survey are “disconcerting for the [KMT’s] election prospects” and they should be shown to Hung, Ma and KMT leaders, KMT Legislator Chen Ken-te (陳根德) told a press conference held by the association in Taipei.
Soong might win some of the votes among pan-blue voters who are still undecided, reducing the number of swing votes that the KMT might lose to the DPP, but he cannot take the lead, association director Edward Hwang (黃國敏) said.
Tsai leads Hung and Soong in most voter groups, defined either by gender, age or region — except by educational level: Tsai leads both opponents among voters who have a college degree or lower, but trails Hung by 30 to 35 percentage points among voters who have a master’s degree or above.
When polled against either Hung or Soong individually or against both simultaneously, Tsai had more than 50 percent of the support of respondents in Yunlin, Chiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Pingtung and Changhua, according to the poll.
That Tsai holds an overwhelming edge in thse regions can be attributed to the rising conflict between different ethnic groups caused by the Ma administration, Chen said.
The momentum has apparently shifted to the DPP, former National Youth Commission head Jack Lee (李允傑) said, adding: “There is a much higher probability that a domino effect — rather than a pendulum effect — could occur in the 2016 elections.”
The survey collected 1,068 valid samples nationwide on Wednesday and Thursday last week, and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Beijing could eventually see a full amphibious invasion of Taiwan as the only "prudent" way to bring about unification, the US Department of Defense said in a newly released annual report to Congress. The Pentagon's "Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2025," was in many ways similar to last year’s report but reorganized the analysis of the options China has to take over Taiwan. Generally, according to the report, Chinese leaders view the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) capabilities for a Taiwan campaign as improving, but they remain uncertain about its readiness to successfully seize
Taiwan is getting a day off on Christmas for the first time in 25 years. The change comes after opposition parties passed a law earlier this year to add or restore five public holidays, including Constitution Day, which falls on today, Dec. 25. The day marks the 1947 adoption of the constitution of the Republic of China, as the government in Taipei is formally known. Back then the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governed China from Nanjing. When the KMT, now an opposition party in Taiwan, passed the legislation on holidays, it said that they would help “commemorate the history of national development.” That
Trips for more than 100,000 international and domestic air travelers could be disrupted as China launches a military exercise around Taiwan today, Taiwan’s Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) said yesterday. The exercise could affect nearly 900 flights scheduled to enter the Taipei Flight Information Region (FIR) during the exercise window, it added. A notice issued by the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration showed there would be seven temporary zones around the Taiwan Strait which would be used for live-fire exercises, lasting from 8am to 6pm today. All aircraft are prohibited from entering during exercise, it says. Taipei FIR has 14 international air routes and
Snow fell on Yushan (Jade Mountain, 玉山) yesterday morning as a continental cold air mass sent temperatures below freezing on Taiwan’s tallest peak, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Snowflakes were seen on Yushan’s north peak from 6:28am to 6:38am, but they did not fully cover the ground and no accumulation was recorded, the CWA said. As of 7:42am, the lowest temperature recorded across Taiwan was minus-5.5°C at Yushan’s Fengkou observatory and minus-4.7°C at the Yushan observatory, CWA data showed. On Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County, a low of 1.3°C was recorded at 6:39pm, when ice pellets fell at Songsyue Lodge (松雪樓), a
RSS