Sayaka Chatani

Opinion Surveys

Since the presidential election on March 20, I found two interesting opinion surveys on newspapers. One is a survey conducted by the New Party (one partner of the KMT coalition) on March 25-26 among the protesters in front of the Presidential Office at Ketagalan Boulevard, in which 9,639 valid samples were collected. The result shows; 59.2% of the respondents (all are pan-blue, of course) hope to organize a new party; 31.3% prefer to see the two splinter parties merge into the KMT; 6.2% want to maintain the status quo. What is more impressive is that among those who identified themselves as KMT members (who constitute 31% of the respondents), 53% hope to organize a new party, while 41% prefer to see the two splinter parties merge into the KMT.

The other survey is the one recently conducted by 中國時報, in which they collected random samples of 1,066. The result shows; 39% of the respondents support the DPP while 27% support the KMT-PFP coalition; 50% hope to see a generation change in the KMT, while 36% hope to see the PFP's absorption into the KMT. The influence of the violence in the 410 protest on the pan-blue supporting rate is enormous, especially compared to the very positive reaction to the 327 peaceful demonstration. (Positive recognition of Ma Ying-jiu 馬英九, Taipei Mayer, dropped from 70% to 44%, Lian-Zhan 連戰 from 40% to 28%, James Song 宋楚瑜 from 38% to 27%), even Chen Shui-bian 陳水扁 could not escape from the criticism for being incompetent in keeping the social order (the negative evaluation of Chen's performance (40%) exceeds the positive one (34%). 57% of the respondents do not support the plan of 519 demonstration.