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.
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