The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has outperformed all of the nation’s other political parties in terms of public recognition, according to an internal survey released by the party yesterday, although 60 percent of respondents said they were dissatisfied with the KMT’s performance.
The survey, conducted from Tuesday to Thursday last week, was the latest in a series of polls the KMT has tasked Trend Survey and Research with conducting since April last year to gauge public perception of major parties.
“The latest figures showed that the KMT’s approval rating stood at 29.9 percent, followed by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) at 26.3 percent, the New Power Party (NPP) at 10.1 percent and the People First Party (PFP) at 3.1 percent, with 23.6 percent of respondents identifying themselves as nonpartisan,” KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Hu Wen-chi (胡文琦) told a news conference.
Compared with a similar poll published on Oct. 14 last year, Hu said the KMT’s support rating rose 6.9 percentage points, while support for the DPP, NPP and PFP fell 0.5, 0.8 and 1.9 percentage points respectively.
The results indicate an increase in public recognition of the KMT, Hu said, attributing the growing support ratings to “deep-blue” and “light-blue” voters’ approval of the party’s performance.
However, when asked whether they were satisfied with the KMT’s performance, 60.3 percent of respondents said “no,” while 28 percent said “yes,” the data showed.
Dissatisfaction with the KMT did not translate into greater support of the DPP, as 69.9 percent of respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the DPP’s performance, while 23.4 percent said they were satisfied, the results showed.
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Tang Te-ming (唐德明) said there were three significant events between April and December last year, during which 22 surveys were conducted.
“The first was on Aug. 5, when the DPP’s approval rating dipped below that of the KMT for the first time. The second was on Aug. 28, when the KMT officially unveiled its peace-centered policy platform, with support for the party surpassing the DPP’s by 12.5 percentage points,” he said.
The third event was on Nov. 22, when the issue of legalization of same-sex marriage triggered heated public debate, Tang said, adding that the DPP’s support rating has not exceeded that of the KMT since then.
He said another indicator that the KMT has been gaining public support was the similar ratings by respondents of KMT and DPP lawmakers’ performance: 4.64 and 4.56 out of seven respectively.
The KMT also appears to be gaining momentum among younger people and those with advanced educational backgrounds, Tang said.
“Among respondents aged 20 to 29, 29.2 percent were satisfied with the KMT’s performance, followed by the DPP at 21.7 percent and the NPP at 20.3 percent,” Tang said.
Among respondents with a bachelor’s degree or higher, 31.3 percent supported the KMT, while the DPP and NPP garnered 20 percent and 16.8 percent support respectively, he added.
The poll, which collected 1,071 valid samples, has a confidence level of 95 percent and margin of error of 3 percentage points.
DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said she respects the survey’s results, but added that “the KMT is living in its own insulated world.”
“The KMT claims its support rating is higher than the DPP’s, which runs counter to the findings of most surveys conducted by other agencies... The veracity of this latest poll is naturally questionable,” she said.
The poll seems like an attempt by the KMT to “blow its own horn,” NPP Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said, adding that the KMT should publicize the entire survey, including how questions were designed, as people’s perception of political parties could be swayed by earlier questions.
Additional reporting by Cheng Hung-ta
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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