An opinion poll published yesterday shows Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) holds a comfortable lead in the year-end mayoral election, and indicated that Taipei residents’ political affiliation is shifting toward a pan-green majority.
The Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation yesterday released the results of its poll on how Taipei residents view Ko, based on the premise that Ko won the 2014 election on the strength of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) support base.
However, as the Ko’s relationship with the DPP appears to have deteriorated, results of the Nov. 24 election are unpredictable, the foundation said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The foundation asked poll respondents if they would prefer the DPP nominating a candidate; a DPP member leaving the party to campaign; or a combination of the two scenarios, if Ko were running against a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate.
According to the poll, 37.3 percent of respondents think the DPP should nominate its own candidate, 31.9 percent think the party should support Ko and 19.2 percent are neutral.
Foundation chairman You Ying-lung (游盈隆) said the majority of voters who are more than 50 years old favor the DPP nominating its own candidate, while most of those under 50 felt the party should again support Ko.
Former KMT legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) has the most support (60.6 percent) among his party’s candidate hopefuls, while DPP Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) leads (38 percent) among DPP hopefuls, the poll showed.
Ko holds a solid support lead of 47.6 percent, beating Ting’s 25.2 percent and Yao’s 15.6 percent, the poll showed.
According to the poll, 9.1 percent of voters view Ko’s administrative performance as “very satisfying” and 45.5 percent view it as “satisfying,” while 27.2 percent view it as “unsatisfying” and 12.2 percent as “very unsatisfying” in the past three years.
The results showed that 50.7 percent of Taipei voters are very satisfied or satisfied with his remark that “the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family,” and 68.3 percent are very satisfied or satisfied with his decision not to remove all statues of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) from the city.
This indicates that most Taipei residents are relatively conservative in their political views and that they are inclined to stick with the “status quo,” the foundation said.
The poll showed that 6.4 percent of voters identify with the DPP and 25.9 percent identify more closely with the DPP, compared with 5.3 percent who identify with the KMT and 23.6 percent who identify more closely with the KMT, while 4.8 percent abstained from answering the question.
The results showed that Taipei residents’ party affiliation has shifted toward the pan-green camp (32.3 percent), edging out the pan-blue camp (28.9 percent) by a narrow margin, You said.
When asked about the poll results, Ko said that he thinks he is handling his mayoral duties well and that he is the “best advertisement for himself.”
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