Opinion polls by two local media outlets released yesterday showed Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) in the lead ahead of the nine-in-one elections on Nov. 24.
A poll commissioned by the Chinese-language Apple Daily and conducted by the Institute of Public Opinion at Shih Hsin University showed Ko leading with 34.9 percent of the vote, 4.1 percentage points higher than Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) at 30.8 percent.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Pasuya Yao (姚文智) had 10.4 percent of the vote, while 21.9 percent of respondents said they were undecided or declined to answer.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Of those polled, 61.6 percent who identified as pan-blue camp supporters said they back Ting, with 23.1 percent supporting Ko.
The poll showed that 45.3 percent of pan-green camp supporters favored Ko and 44.9 supported Yao, while 43.3 percent of neutral respondents supported Ko, 18.2 percent support Ting and 4.4 percent support Yao.
The telephone poll was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, and collected 1,068 valid responses.
Another poll conducted by online news outlet ETtoday showed Ko had the highest support rating of 41.7 percent, followed by Ting at 29.9 percent and Yao at 8.4 percent.
Independent candidate Li Hsi-kun (李錫錕) had 1.1 percent, while 5.6 percent said they support no one and 13.3 percent were undecided or refused to answer.
ETtoday’s poll was conducted between Sept. 3 and Sept. 9 via an online survey of eligible voters under 50 years old and computer-assisted telephone interviews of those older than 50. It collected 2,408 valid responses.
After the Apple Daily poll showed that voters are most confident in Ting’s ability to solve the issues surrounding the Taipei Dome construction project, Ko yesterday said that the project shows that many minor problems can add up to become a “big mess,” but added that everything must be safe and legal, and the project would be discussed at an urban design review meeting on Thursday.
He also said it is unlikely that the DPP would persuade Yao to withdraw from the mayoral election after a rumor circulated that the party could do so if his support rating remains below 15 percent.
Yao told a news conference yesterday that although the first and second phase of the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit circular line have been completed, a north-south public transport corridor to connect the city’s Dazhi area (大直) and Nangang (南港) and Xinyi (信義) districts is still needed to solve the city’s traffic problems.
Additional reporting by Chou Yen-yu
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
RSS