Polls yesterday disagreed whether President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) or former premier William Lai (賴清德) would be the leading presidential hopeful for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in a three-way presidential election against the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) likely candidates and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
The Cross-Strait Policy Association described Tsai as gaining on Lai in the three-way race for the first time in its polls.
Should Tsai run against the KMT’s Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) and Ko, an independent, Han, Tsai and Ko would respectively claim 32.6 percent, 27.9 percent and 26 percent of the vote, it said.
Photo: CNA
If Lai ran, he would win 26.8 percent of the vote, trailing Han and Ko by 4.8 percent and 1.8 percent respectively, or underperforming Tsai by 0.1 percent, it said.
In a race against Hon Hai Group chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) and Ko, Tsai would win 28 percent of the vote against Gou’s 30.2 percent and Ko’s 28 percent, or a slight improvement over Lai’s 27.3 percent, it said.
Tsai’s performance in the three-way races has improved over the past two polls, where Lai led her by one or two points, depending on the scenario, it said.
The poll, which had a margin of error of 2.95 percentage points and 1,101 valid samples, was conducted by telephone on Monday and Tuesday last week, the association said.
However, a separate poll released by the New Constitution Foundation showed that Lai would outperform Tsai against Ko and either Han or Guo.
In a three-way race against Ko and Han, Lai would claim 30.5 of the vote, outperforming Tsai’s 28 percent, whereas in a race with Ko and Gou, Lai would win 30.9 percent of the vote, more than Tsai’s 26.7 percent, it said.
Within the DPP, Lai and Tsai had approval ratings of 47.3 percent and 32 percent respectively, largely unchanged from the foundation’s previous poll, it said, adding that 42.7 percent of respondents expressed unhappiness with the DPP’s decision to delay its presidential primary.
Within the KMT, Han has the highest approval rating at 35.1 percent, ahead of KMT Legislator Wang Jin-pyng’s (王金平) 19.9 percent, Guo’s 17.3 percent and former New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) 14 percent, it said.
The poll, conducted on Thursday and Friday last week, had a margin of error of 3 percentage points and collected 1,069 valid samples.
In related news, a group of pro-localization organizations yesterday held a news conference in support of Lai.
Medical practitioner Chen Yung-hsin (陳永興) said Lai has been running a clean campaign, while the DPP leadership has repeatedly changed the rules of the primary and its schedule to “rig the game in favor of the incumbent.”
A petition to establish an “association of friends of William Lai” had gathered 1,101 signatures since Tuesday, including 288 doctors, with 2,000 signatures being the goal, he added.
Additional reporting by Peng Wan-hsin
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS