Wednesday, April 01, 2009

TVBS Taipei County Election Polls

After you've read this scary US Naval Institute report on a new Chinese weapon, a ballistic missile modified to kill US carriers, you can have a glance at this Klingon News Network (KNN) report on the latest TVBS poll on the Taipei County executive race. Former DPP Vice Presidential Candidate Su (also a former premier and former Taipei County Chief), the likely DPP challenger, is pitted in the poll against several different KMT politicians. An anonymous commenter yesterday said internal KMT polls are also showing strong DPP gains in Taipei County, though it is impossible to verify that -- the current leader, Chou Hsi-wei has low approval ratings. The China Post noted the other day Chou was saying the spate of polls showing him behind other candidates was all a conspiracy by other KMTers out to get him. Remember, this is a TVBS poll, but it does seem to reflect what other polls have found -- that Su wins against all KMT candidates. He did a bang-up job as county chief, and was quite popular.


TVBS Public Opinion Poll
(March 31, 2009)
(Source PDF)
1. The upcoming Taipei County Executive election will be held at the end of the year. Are you going to vote?

Definitely
54%
Maybe
25%
Not sure
9%
No
12%

2. For this year’s Taipei County Executive election, if KMT’s Chou His-wei were running against DPP’s Su Tseng-chang, whom would you vote for if you were to vote tomorrow?


December 29, 2008
March 26, 2009
Chou His-wei
29%
27%
Su Tseng-chang
53%
52%
Don’t know / Undecided
18%
21%

3. For this year’s Taipei County Executive election, if KMT’s Chu Li-luan were running against DPP’s Su Tseng-chang, whom would you vote for if you were to vote tomorrow?


March 26, 2009
Chu Li-luan
39%
Su Tseng-chang
41%
Don’t know / Undecided
20%

4. For this year’s Taipei County Executive election, if KMT’s Wu Don-Yih were running against DPP’s Su Tseng-chang, whom would you vote for if you were to vote tomorrow?


March 26, 2009
Wu Don-Yih
34%
Su Tseng-chang
48%
Don’t know / Undecided
18%

5. For this year’s Taipei County Executive election, if Pan-Blue’s James Soong were running against DPP’s Su Tseng-chang, whom would you vote for if you were to vote tomorrow?


March 26, 2009
James Soong
31%
Su Tseng-chang
50%
Don’t know / Undecided
19%

Note: The public opinion poll was conducted from 6:30 pm to 10:00 pm on March 26 with 864 people over 20 years of age successfully surveyed and 117 people declining to be surveyed. The margin of error associated with this sample is plus or minus 3.3 % with a 95 % confidence interval.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Of course the down side is that this may be an attempt at a KMT mobilization call.

The KMT controls so much information and how it is delivered, it is very difficult to get an alternative message. They may use this control over the media to manipulate voters access to pertinent information that could influence their choice come election time.

Anonymous said...

My light blue girlfriend lives and works in Taipei County. According to her and her blue co-workers, the reason Chou Hsi-wei is unpopular is because Su broke the bank in his previous term and left Chou with no money to do anything. Apparently, Su overspent on the Taipei County "City Hall" building and the surrounding area. (so the story goes)

apple said...

I'm disappointed Sean Lien wasn't included in the survey. He must have more political capital than James Soong!

Anonymous said...

Anon, your gf ain't "light" blue, haha. Almost all the counties except Taipei City are in poor financial straits. Taipei County is actually very well off compared to southern cities/counties and has been given a lot more money by the central govt in the last two years, which are most of Chou's term.

I live in Taipei County. There's a general feeling that other than the beautification of certain areas, nothing really happened in Taipei County these few years that wasn't already happening.

The stuff that did happen didn't happen very well--the sewer works caused my apartment to start to smell; the patching of the road near where I live has been extremely haphazard and made the road more uneven or otherwise worn away very quickly; police are giving motorcyclists a hard time without any clear reason why; enforcement of who can street vendor and where is unclear, but they are giving out more tickets.

Taipei County has installed a whole bunch of traffic cameras whose single purpose appears to be to make as much money for Taipei County as possible rather than increase the safety of roads here.

Taipei County has gotten a huge amount of money because it's becoming a "directly administered city" soon, just like Taipei and Kaohsiung Cities. They like doubled the police force or something like that. In spite of that thefts seem to be on the rise (attempted theft of my neighbor recently but the overall picture is more impt).

Last, the Chou Hsi-wei has suffered from a lot of bad publicity that is mostly his fault. Before he started office, he was already ordering an expensive renovation of his office (this is completely opposite of what Ma Ying-jeou's reputation was and he was elected largely on the credit of Ma). When a supposed "tiger" was on the loose, he led a troope of officers up a mountainside with a sword? Something fairly ridiculous. What was he planning to do if he really did run into a tiger? Seriously retarded.

It ended up being a stray dog. Then lately, there's issue of his vice mayor besides infidelity (personally not a big deal to me), but apparently having some fun on govt time.

There are some things that I agree with. The man-made wetlands used to treat sewage while creating greenspace are a good idea. Some of the water works I agree with. But note that some of this was the result of local activism and not some wise policy on the part of Chou Hsi-wei.

Progressives have a lot to dislike in the destruction of historical sites in Taipei County including Lo Sheng Liao Yang Yuan, the former leprosy colony, among others. Like Taipei City, Miaoli County, there is absolutely no respect for historical buildings.

There wasn't any particular good reason to vote for Chou except that Ma was popular back then. Now Ma's not, and Chou still doesn't give you a reason to vote for him. It's possible he hasn't done that poorly of a job, but he sure hasn't done a good one either.