Dissatisfaction with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has risen to 70.2 percent, and only 25 percent of interviewees are satisfied with his performance, according to a poll released by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday.
The poll, conducted by the DPP amid the opposition’s plans to hold mass demonstrations tomorrow and Sunday against rising electricity, fuel and retail prices, showed 60.6 of the respondents said they were in favor of the protests to express their dissatisfaction with the administration. Thirty-two percent of respondents said they were against the protests.
The survey found that 65 percent of respondents said they had no confidence in the next four years under Ma, while 30.6 percent said they still have faith in Ma.
Photo: Chang Hsuan-che, Taipei Times
More than two-thirds of the respondents, 66.7 percent, said they lacked confidence in the nation’s economic performance over the next four years and only 29.9 percent said they still remained optimistic, the poll showed.
A comparison between the latest survey with one the DPP conducted on May 2 shows the number of dissatisfied people has risen from 65.4 percent to 70.2 percent, an increase of 4.6 percentage points. Ma’s approval rating has dipped from 25.8 percent in the May 2 survey to 25 percent.
The latest poll showed 86.1 percent of interviewees were pessimistic that the wealth gap would be closed over the next four years, with only 10.5 percent hopeful of the gap closing.
When asked about their expectations over the next four years, 58.7 percent of respondents thought life would get worse, while 25.9 percent felt it would improve and 7.8 percent felt it would be the same.
The survey showed a majority of people are pessimistic about their quality of life over the next four years, the DPP said.
Saying the poll results were about the same as surveys conducted by TV stations, newspapers and other organizations, DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said the polls demonstrated that disappointment with the Ma administration has grown beyond the pan-green and pan-blue divide.
The survey was conducted on Monday and Tuesday night, targeting people who were 20 and older. A total of 1,334 valid samples were collected, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.73 percentage points.
Translated by Jake Chung, staff writer
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