President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) approval rating has rallied to more than 30 percent following Premier William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration this month, while 60 percent of voters would not support councilor candidates affiliated with former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in next year’s election, a poll released yesterday by the Taiwan Brain Trust said.
Tsai’s performance was satisfactory to 34.6 percent of the respondents, while 48.7 percent said they were dissatisfied, the poll showed.
The 34.6 percent satisfaction rate — rising from 28.5 percent in June — was the highest approval rating among the think tank’s surveys since April, while the dissatisfaction rate fell from 56.3 percent in June to 48.7 percent this month.
Photo: CNA
While 61.5 percent of the respondents said they had confidence in Lai’s performance, only 20.8 percent said they did not.
The Cabinet reshuffle launched by Lai on Sept. 8, in which only three minister-level officials were replaced, was satisfactory to 39.7 percent of the respondents, while 31.4 percent were dissatisfied, the survey showed.
Minister of National Defense Feng Shih-kuan (馮世寬), Minister of Justice Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) and Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lee (李大維) were among the most unpopular Cabinet members, with disapproval ratings of 47.6 percent, 45.3 percent and 40.9 percent respectively and approval ratings of 30.3 percent, 28 percent and 31.1 percent.
“There is a large gap between the approval ratings of the premier and his Cabinet because the reshuffle was a minor one. It remains to be seen if the minimally restructured Cabinet can keep up with the highly popular Lai,” Taiwan Brain Trust executive officer Chen Chih-chung (陳致中) said.
A large portion of Tsai’s supporters are people older than 60 and people with only an elementary-school education, whose support for Tsai is mainly based on sentiment, while people with higher education are particularly dissatisfied with Tsai, National Dong Hwa University professor Shih Cheng-feng (施正鋒) said.
In terms of party preference, 33.6 percent of respondents identified with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), 23.9 percent with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), 12.3 percent with the New Power Party (NPP) and 4.5 percent with the People First Party (PFP), while 14.4 percent said they are neutral.
The popularity of the DPP has climbed from a low of 26.7 percent in October last year to 33.6 percent this month, nearly as high as its 35.1 percent rating in April last year, one month before Tsai’s administration was sworn in.
The popularity of the KMT has been rising steadily, from a low of 17.2 percent in April last year to 23.9 percent this month, while the NPP’s popularity has fluctuated between 10.5 percent and 15.4 percent in the same period.
The DPP remains the most popular party in the nation, although it is without a strong approval rating.
While 29.4 percent of respondents disapproved of the DPP, more than 40 percent said the performance of other parties was unsatisfying, including the KMT (42.9 percent disapproval), the NPP (44 percent disapproval) and the PFP (48.7 percent disapproval).
While 34.8 percent had a negative impression about the DPP, the KMT was negatively perceived by 45.4 percent of respondents, the NPP by 49.4 percent and the PFP by 52.6 percent.
In next year’s councilor elections, 37 percent of respondents said they would vote for the pan-green camp, including 30.4 percent for the DPP, 4.6 percent for the NPP and 1.3 percent for the Green Party, and 25.8 percent said they would vote for the pan-blue camp, including 23 percent for the KMT and 1.5 percent for the PFP, while 32.9 percent were undecided.
While 21.4 percent of respondents said they would refuse to vote for the KMT, 15.3 percent would spurn the DPP and 11.5 percent would reject the NPP in the councilor elections next year.
While 60.6 percent of respondents indicated they would refuse to vote for councilor candidates endorsed by Chen Shui-bian’s “one country on each side” faction, 22.8 percent might support those candidates, said the think tank, which is affiliated with the former president.
The survey, conducted on Sept. 14 and Sept. 15, collected 1,076 samples with a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
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