Following a month-long rivalry between President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and former premier William Lai (賴清德), Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters are relieved that the two on Wednesday agreed to present their platforms in separate broadcasts, with dates to be decided.
However, one hotly debated issue remains unsettled: How should the party conduct opinion polls for its primary?
Tsai on May 4 said that given the widespread use of cellphones, polls must include interviews conducted on them to more accurately reflect public opinion.
The next day, Lai suggested that the party’s primary system of using landline interviews should be kept, as there is a greater risk of meddling with cellphone data. He also said that cellphone-based interviews should not be ruled out if there is evidence that the data could be trusted.
Lai’s concerns are not baseless. According to National Communications Commission statistics, 29 million cellphones were in use in Taiwan last year, an average of 1.24 per person. Excluding people under the age of 21, the average is 1.5, meaning many people have two or more.
While cellphone surveys are common in the US, the practice is nascent in Taiwan. Since the DPP’s rules for opinion polls were established in 2008 and put into practice in 2011, all of its surveys have been landline-based.
However, landline surveys are not without their own problems.
The party’s rules for public opinion polls require that they be conducted using telephone numbers in the yellow pages, which covers only about 3.28 million households, compared with the total of more than 8 million.
As such, Tsai’s call for cellphones to be included quickly gained traction among DPP supporters.
Both camps have made valid arguments, but have taken such hardline stances that they cannot see the forest for the trees.
First, with the primary procedure having been initiated in March, the party needs to consider whether it is appropriate to change the rules now. If the majority of its members believe that they should, then they should be respected and the dispute put to rest.
Second, it needs to study the problem of the added variables introduced by cellphone surveys before outsourcing polls to five companies as stipulated in its rules.
Third, the party’s Central Standing and Central Executive committees should work out reasonable weightings to be assigned to landline and cellphone surveys, so that results are a better assessment of the pulse of public opinion.
Former New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), who is contesting the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential primary, was asked to comment on the issue of including cellphone surveys in his party’s opinion polls.
“Any method that is fair and just is a good method,” Chu said.
With a second internal mediation meeting over the DPP’s primary to be held today, perhaps this is the mindset the party needs.
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