A poll released yesterday showed that 42 percent of Taipei voters think the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) should field its own candidate for November’s Taipei mayoral election, while 28.3 percent favor the DPP endorsing Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
The response from Taipei respondents differed from that of the nation as a whole, in which 40.6 percent of respondents think the DPP should endorse Ko and 34.1 percent believe the party should field its own candidate, Taiwan Brain Trust said.
Ko, a former surgeon, is an independent whom the DPP endorsed in the 2014 elections, but the alliance has been strained by the growing rift between Ko and DPP supporters over Ko’s perceived tilt toward China.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Taipei residents and the rest of the country are happy with Ko’s performance as a mayor, the poll showed.
Ko’s approval ratings among Taipei residents, non-Taipei residents and voters in general were 55.6 percent, 57.6 percent and 57.4 percent respectively, the poll showed.
The mayor is favored to win by 55.3 percent of Taipei residents, 47.5 percent of non-Taipei residents and 48.3 percent of all voters, it said.
However, 55.5 percent of the nation’s voters said they would not approve of Ko running for president in 2020 if he succeeds in being re-elected mayor. Only 26.3 percent said they would support such a move.
Taipei residents and non-Taipei residents disapproved of this hypothetical scenario by 66.6 percent and 54.1 percent respectively.
Should Ko fail in his re-election bid, 59.8 percent of all voters would still not approve of him running for president, while 25.9 percent said they would support Ko.
The disapproval rate for Ko in this scenario is 65.2 percent among Taipei residents and 59.2 percent among non-Taipei residents.
A total of 50.6 percent of all voters said they would like to see unconventional candidates run in the presidential election.
The survey also ran a hypothetical scenario in which Ko, Control Yuan member Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟), former premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) and Formosa TV chairman Kuo Pei-hung (郭倍宏) ran as presidential candidates. The results showed them commanding support ratings of 32 percent, 17.9 percent, 5.5 percent and 2.6 percent respectively.
The telephone survey was conducted by the Trend Survey and Research Co on behalf of Taiwan Brain Trust. It collected 1,079 valid samples and had a confidence level of 95 percent. The poll was weighed by residency, gender, age and educational attainment.
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