Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) continued to lead the other candidates by a wide margin in the latest opinion poll on next year’s presidential election, with more than 65 percent of respondents saying they expect Tsai to win.
The poll, the first conducted by the Cross-Strait Policy Association (CSPA) after People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) joined the race on Thursday last week, showed that Tsai’s support rating climbed by about 3 percentage points to 42.9 percent from 39.6 percent last month.
During the same period, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) saw her support rating drop to 16.8 percent from 19.4 percent, while Soong’s support level rose to 23.3 percent from 21.4 percent, the survey showed.
It was the first time Tsai’s support rating exceeded the combined figures for Hung and Soong, CSPA deputy director-general Tan Yao-nan (譚耀南) told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
Despite Soong’s entry into the race, as many as 67.4 percent of respondents were optimistic about Tsai winning the election on Jan. 16 next year, up from 63.4 percent last month. Just 8.3 percent and 9.4 percent believed Hung and Soong would be elected as the nation’s next president respectively, the poll indicated.
Contrary to a widespread belief that cross-strait issues were a sore spot for the DPP, 34.5 percent of those polled were confident in Tsai’s ability to safeguard the nation’s interests in cross-strait negotiations, against Hung’s 16.4 percent and Soong’s 22.1 percent.
Tsai’s leadership skills also won high approval from respondents, with 39.4 percent believing that she would steer Taiwan into a better future, while just 22.1 percent and 15.1 percent expressed the same kind of confidence in Soong and Hung respectively.
In addition, the poll found Tsai to be more popular than her opponents among people aged below 40, particularly among those in the 25 to 29 age group, with a 55 percent support rate.
On the other hand, Soong garnered the highest support rating among Taiwanese aged between 45 and 54, with 34 percent backing him. Hung received less than 20 percent support among people of nearly all age groups, with the only two exceptions being those aged between 35 and 39, as well as between 40 and 45.
With regard to the legislative elections, the DPP received 30.3 percent of support as a party, followed by the KMT’s 24.3 percent, the PFP’s 6.6 percent and the New Power Party’s (NPP) 5.6 percent.
The telephone-based poll was conducted on Sunday among 1,074 Taiwanese aged 20 or older, and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Commenting on the results, CSPA secretary-general Hung Yao-nan (洪耀南) said the large gap between Soong’s support rating and that of the PFP suggested that his presidential bid had failed to help build momentum for his party.
“However, the noticeable disparity could be due to some pan-blue supporters’ intention to cast party votes for the KMT, as a way of compensating for their plan to vote for Soong as president instead of Hung,” Hung Yao-nan said.
Tan said that based on the poll, Soong’s presidential bid was mostly detrimental to Hung, but it could nevertheless compromise Tsai’s chance of winning more than half of the votes in the election.
“Although a divided pan-blue camp might successfully put Soong in second place in the presidential election, the veteran politician should still prepare himself for a likely curveball from Beijing in the next five months that could remove him from contention,” Tan said.
As for the role of third political forces in the race, Tan said there would be ample room for further development of the parties, given that the newly founded NPP received a support rating greater than the 5 percent threshold for parties to name legislators-at-large in the legislature and that nearly 20 percent of respondents declined to respond.
Former DPP chairman Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良) said that if Soong’s upward momentum continued, Hung’s support rating would most likely plunge to about 10 percent.
However, Hsu said the chances of Tsai’s support rate dropping were slim, citing the trend of an increasing turnout among young voters.
The Ministry of Education (MOE) is to launch a new program to encourage international students to stay in Taiwan and explore job opportunities here after graduation, Deputy Minister of Education Yeh Ping-cheng (葉丙成) said on Friday. The government would provide full scholarships for international students to further their studies for two years in Taiwan, so those who want to pursue a master’s degree can consider applying for the program, he said. The fields included are science, technology, engineering, mathematics, semiconductors and finance, Yeh added. The program, called “Intense 2+2,” would also assist international students who completed the two years of further studies in
Former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) departed for Europe on Friday night, with planned stops in Lithuania and Denmark. Tsai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Friday night, but did not speak to reporters before departing. Tsai wrote on social media later that the purpose of the trip was to reaffirm the commitment of Taiwanese to working with democratic allies to promote regional security and stability, upholding freedom and democracy, and defending their homeland. She also expressed hope that through joint efforts, Taiwan and Europe would continue to be partners building up economic resilience on the global stage. The former president was to first
Taiwan will now have four additional national holidays after the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment today, which also made Labor Day a national holiday for all sectors. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their majority in the Legislative Yuan to pass the amendment to the Act on Implementing Memorial Days and State Holidays (紀念日及節日實施辦法), which the parties jointly proposed, in its third and final reading today. The legislature passed the bill to amend the act, which is currently enforced administratively, raising it to the legal level. The new legislation recognizes Confucius’ birthday on Sept. 28, the
MORE NEEDED: Recall drives against legislators in Miaoli’s two districts and Hsinchu’s second district were still a few thousand signatures short of the second-stage threshold Campaigners aiming to recall Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday said they expect success in 30 out of 35 districts where drives have passed the second-stage threshold, which would mark a record number of recall votes held at once. Hsinchu County recall campaigners yesterday announced that they reached the second-stage threshold in the recall effort against Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘). A total of 26,414 signatures have been gathered over the past two months, surpassing the 10 percent threshold of 23,287 in Hsinchu County’s second electoral district, chief campaigner Hsieh Ting-ting (謝婷婷) said. “Our target is to gather an additional 1,500 signatures to reach
RSS