Another poll yesterday gave presidential hopeful Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) a slight lead over Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), but remained inconclusive as to who would be the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) final nominee.
The Taiwan Brain Trust survey, the second poll on DPP candidates to come out this week, showed that both would beat President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) if the elections were held today.
The numbers were at odds with what some other polls have suggested in the past few days.
Conducted on March 30, the Taiwan Brain Trust poll showed that Tsai would take 40.7 percent of the vote against 36.7 percent for Ma. Su would take 37.7 percent against Ma’s 31.7 percent.
While the survey shows that Su would lead Ma by a wider margin at 6 percentage points versus Tsai’s 4 percentage points, the DPP’s nomination guidelines state that the candidate with greater support would take the nomination.
The Taiwan Brain Trust numbers suggest that Tsai commanded more support among undecided voters, with 33.5 percent against Ma’s 20.4 percent, while Su would only take 25.4 percent against Ma’s 16.7 percent.
On Monday, a Broadcasting Corporation of China-commissioned poll showed Tsai and Su nearly tied, with both losing slightly to Ma.
Another DPP presidential hopeful, Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良), was not included in the Taiwan Brain Trust survey, although he has attempted to increase his media exposure as of late.
Yesterday, he met former -Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興), who quit the party last year over a nominations furor.
Yang gave Hsu his support and said he saw eye-to-eye with some of the former DPP chairman’s cross-strait ideas.
“Once I heard Hsu announce his participation in the primary, I organized a meeting because I recognize his policies,” Yang said.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but