An opinion poll released by online news outlet My-Formosa.com yesterday gave Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) a clear lead over other mayoral candidates, with a support rate of 37.5 percent.
The poll also showed that more than half of the respondents did not believe that Ko was involved in organ harvesting in China.
Of the respondents, 37.5 percent said that they would vote for Ko, an independent seeking re-election, while 25 percent said they would vote for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) and 11.3 percent said they supported Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Pasuya Yao (姚文智).
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Of the remaining quarter of voters, 2.6 percent said they would vote for other independent candidates and 23.6 percent were undecided or did not reply.
In comparison with the Web site’s previous poll last month, support for Ko, Ting and Yao increased by between 0.2 percent and 2.9 percentage points.
However, poll results broken down by party identification showed that 43 percent of pan-green supporters now said they would vote for Ko, compared with 38.4 percent who would vote for Yao, a reversal from the previous result of 39.1 percent for Ko and 43.3 percent for Yao.
Asked whether they believed that Ko had been involved in organ harvesting in China, 54.8 percent of respondents said they did not, while 19.3 percent said they did.
The question was added following a news conference implicating Ko by US author Ethan Gutmann, who in 2014 described organ harvesting in his book The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem, which included an interview with Ko.
Gutmann said he believed that Ko might have acted as a “middleman” in the practice and answered “yes” when an attendee asked whether he thought Ko was a “liar” — without specifying the context.
The accusations prompted Ko to file a criminal complaint against Gutmann for defamation.
The poll also asked whether people believed that Ko’s remark that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family” referred to Taiwan announcing to the world that it accepts China’s goal of unification.
Of the respondents, 67.6 percent said they disagreed, while 17.8 percent said they agreed.
When broken down by party identification, 53 percent of pan-green camp supporters disagreed, while 38.5 percent agreed.
The telephone poll was conducted by Taiwan Indicators Survey Research on Thursday and Friday last week, and collected 1,070 valid responses from Taipei residents.
In related news, an opinion poll by the Taiwan NextGen Foundation yesterday showed Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) of the DPP as leading in the city’s mayoral race.
Lin had a 41.4 percent support rate, ahead of his KMT opponent Lu Shiow-yen’s (盧秀燕) support rate of 31.1 percent, the poll showed.
The poll said that 50.4 percent of respondents said Lin would win, while 26.1 percent said that Lu would win.
The poll also showed that 51.6 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with Lin’s administration, while 34.4 percent said they were not.
The announcement on Friday last week that the Taichung Power Plant would retire its four oldest coal-fired generators in 2023 and replace them with two gas-fired systems appears to have boosted the party in the polls, the foundation said.
The poll was conducted in the evenings of Saturday and Sunday, collected answers from 1,078 voting-age adults.
On Sunday, a poll conducted by a KMT think tank showed Lu leading by 6.5 percent.
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