Nearly 46 percent of voters showed no clear preference for any political party, a 9.6 percentage point rise from a month earlier, a survey released yesterday by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-affiliated National Policy Foundation showed.
The survey, which was conducted by Taiwan Real Survey Co from Tuesday to Thursday last week, was based on telephone interviews with 1,077 adults across Taiwan aged 20 or older, said the foundation, which commissioned it.
When asked which political party they “support more,” 22.6 percent of respondents said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), 19 percent said the KMT, 7.3 percent said the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and 3.9 percent said the New Power Party (NPP), the survey showed.
Photo courtesy of the National Policy Foundation via CNA
Other parties, including the People First Party, the Taiwan Statebuilding Party, Green Party Taiwan, the New Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union, each received support from less than 1 percent of respondents, it showed.
There were 45.8 percent who did not indicate a preference for any political party, including those who declined to respond to the question, it showed.
A similar survey released by the foundation last month showed that 36.2 percent of respondents did not favor any party.
Since last month, the gap between those supporting the DPP and the KMT has narrowed, while there was a decline in support for all of the major parties, foundation vice president Huang Hsin-hua (黃心華) told a news conference in Taipei.
Last month’s survey showed that 24.7 percent preferred the DPP, while 20.6 percent preferred the KMT — a difference of 4.1 percentage points, Huang said.
This month, the gap was 3.6 percentage points, he said.
The TPP and the NPP last month were favored by 10.4 percent and 6 percent respectively, he said.
The decline in support for political parties across the board coincided with a clear increase over the past two months in the percentage of people who describe themselves as politically neutral, Huang said.
June was a low point for the KMT, he said, adding that the gap between the DPP and the KMT that month was 19.2 percentage points.
“The DPP’s one-party dominance in the first half of this year has come to an end,” he said.
Swing voters are now the “largest party” in Taiwan, he said.
This should encourage political parties, especially opposition parties, to adopt a more pragmatic approach to winning their approval, Huang said.
The survey has a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 2.99 percentage points, the foundation said.
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