In a media poll released yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her running mate, former Academia Sinica vice president Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), maintained a 27-point lead over their Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) counterparts.
According to the poll conducted by the Chinese-language United Daily News, Tsai and Chen have 46 percent support, while KMT presidential candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) and his running mate, former Council of Labor Affairs minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄), have 19 percent, trailed by People First Party presidential candidate James Soong and his Republic Party running mate Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩) with 9 percent.
Twenty-seven percent of respondents said they are undecided or have no opinion on the issue.
Sixty-four percent of respondents said that Tsai and Chen would win the presidential election, while only 8 percent backed Chu and Wang, and 2 percent said Soong and Hsu.
A cross-analysis of the poll found that the DPP duo had the highest support among people aged between 20 and 39, garnering 54 percent support, whereas the KMT pair had only 14 percent.
Forty-three percent of respondents aged between 40 and 59 supported Tsai and Chen, while 22 percent supported Chu and Wang. The DPP candidates had the smallest lead, 13 percent, over the KMT among respondents aged 60 or older.
The poll also showed that Chu and Wang have not won pan-blue voters’ total support, with only 55 percent of respondents saying they would pledge allegiance to the KMT candidates, with 15 percent turning to the DPP pair and 15 percent to Soong and Hsu.
Tsai and Chen retained overwhelming support from pan-green voters, with 90 percent saying they would vote for the DPP pair, who also had higher support among independent voters, enjoying a lead of 33 percent to less than 10 percent for Chu and Wang.
Related to legislative seats, the poll found that the DPP was favored over the KMT by 35 percent to 25 percent in terms of the party vote — for at-large legislators — and it also maintained a five-point lead in the district legislative races.
The poll was conducted on Friday and was based on 850 valid samples; it has a confidence level of 95 percent, with a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.
On Friday, poll numbers released by the Taiwan Indicators Survey Research also had Tsai and Chen as the steady frontrunners, with 44.8 percent of support, compared with Chu and Wang’s 19.1 percent, and Soong and Hsu’s 11.8 percent.
Eight Chinese naval vessels and 24 military aircraft were detected crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait between 6am yesterday and 6am today, the Ministry of National Defense said this morning. The aircraft entered Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern and eastern air defense identification zones, the ministry said. The armed forces responded with mission aircraft, naval vessels and shore-based missile systems to closely monitor the situation, it added. Eight naval vessels, one official ship and 36 aircraft sorties were spotted in total, the ministry said.
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