President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) approval rating fell below her disapproval rating for the first time since her inauguration on May 20, according to a poll conducted by a pan-green think tank.
The telephone survey, conducted by the Taiwan Thinktank from Friday last week to Sunday, is the fifth poll the nonprofit public policy research organization conducted on Tsai’s administration.
Compared with the previous survey, published on Aug. 26, Tsai’s approval rating fell 7.9 percent to 40.6 percent, while her disapproval rating rose from 38.4 percent to 42.8 percent during the same period, according to the latest poll.
It marked the first time that Tsai’s approval rating has been surpassed by her disapproval rating, the think tank told a news conference in Taipei yesterday morning.
The think said the public still appears relatively satisfied with Tsai’s policies, with 66.8 percent of respondents supporting her decision to chair the weekly High-Level Policy Coordination Meetings, which bring together officials from the Executive Yuan and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to deliberate on major government policies and social issues.
Only 18.9 percent disapproved of the meetings, which have been criticized by some as unconstitutional, with 14.3 percent declining to express their opinion, the survey found.
Respondents seemed to be divided on the Tsai administration’s plan to extend National Health Insurance (NHI) coverage to Chinese students, who will be required to pay for full monthly premiums, as would students from other nations, if the proposal is passed by the legislature.
The survey found that 51.5 percent of respondents supported the plan, which was proposed by Tsai last month on humanitarian grounds, while 41 percent did not approve.
Public opinions was also divided on draft amendments to the Civil Code to legalize same-sex marriage, which passed their first readings at the legislature on Tuesday, with 47.8 percent of respondents supporting the move and 41.7 percent opposing it.
According to the poll, 46.9 percent of respondents said there is no need for the government to acknowledge the so-called “1992 consensus” to develop cross-strait ties, while 29.5 percent said otherwise.
About 52 percent of respondents disapproved of the idea set forth by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) during her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing on Nov. 1 that the “1992 consensus” and the “one China” principle should serve as the political foundation for cross-strait mutual trust.
However, 34.3 percent of respondents, about 70 percent of whom identified themselves as KMT supporters, agreed with Hung’s idea, the poll found.
The “1992 consensus” refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and Beijing that both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
Former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) said in 2006 that he had made up the term in 2000.
The survey collected 1,069 valid samples.
It has a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater