Hahahahaha: looking forward to the election season

The reporting on Taiwan has improved in recent years, but as Bloomberg shows today, there's still plenty of room for progress. Check out this piece extolling the virtues of President Ma:

Ma had the confidence of 43.5 percent of the people polled, according to an April 20 statement on the website of Taipei- based Global Views Survey Research Center. As many as 32.9 percent of the respondents in the survey said his performance was satisfactory, according to the statement.

Hahahaha!! Most of the article is arguably slanted -- note that it quotes Ma's statement without contextualizing information (growth this year is expect to check in at ~4.3%, for example), but the above paragraph is truly priceless. "As many as 32.9%...." Here's what I wrote about that selfsame poll:

Good news for the DPP as Ma's poll numbers, which peaked briefly in Jan, are appearing to return to their more natural level of 32.9%, as the latest Global Views poll indicates. Dissatisfaction with Ma is now at 56%. This is the third straight month of slumping numbers for the President, so perhaps we've established a trend. Similarly, the numbers from the TVBS poll from the first week in April were 30% satisfied and 50% dissatisfied. The mess with the appointment of the judge appears to have hurt Ma, whose ridiculous explanations were not believed. In that same poll TVBS also asked about the Kuokuang Petrochemical complex, confirming my anecdotal experience: just 22% supported it, while 48% oppose it.

In other words, the Bloomberg paragraph is pure spin; the trust numbers cited in it are similarly in a slump. It is not difficult to discover that Ma's numbers are in a slump; the GVSRC explanation of the numbers makes that clear:

GVSRC poll indicated President Ma’s approval rating was 35 percent and disapproval rating 52 percent. Compared with last month, Ma's approval rating slipped 3 percentage points and his disapproval rating edged up by 0.7 percentage points. 42.4 percent of the polled had trust in President Ma but 43.2 percent said otherwise. Compared with the previous month, the level of public trust in Ma dropped 3 percentage points while the level of public distrust in Ma advanced 3.1 percentage points. Generally speaking, President Ma receives more negative evaluation and less positive evaluation on his approval rating and public trust rating this month. Public evaluation on President Ma returns to the level he received during the five mayoral elections in November last year.

The GVSRC didn't want to complete the thought, but the KMT won 3 of 5 of the mayoral elections only because one local gangbanger decided to assassinate another and instead shot the son of a powerful local politician. In other words the GVSRC is setting out a warning that Ma's numbers signal vulnerability.

If Bloomberg keeps churning out dreck like this, I'll have plenty to blog on this coming election season. Keep up the bad work!
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