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
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000
RSS