Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) holds a slight lead over President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in both a head-to-head scenario and a possible three-way race, according to the latest survey, and Tsai would likely win the January presidential election if economic issues were voters’ top concern, analysts said in a forum yesterday.
A public opinion poll, conducted on Friday and Saturday by the Taiwan Brain Trust think tank, found that 35.9 percent of respondents would vote for Tsai, while 32.2 percent would vote for Ma and 13.7 percent would support People First Party Chairperson James Soong (宋楚瑜) in a three-way race.
Tsai also leads Ma with 40.1 percent versus 37.3 percent in a head-to-head battle, according to the survey.
Photo: Chang Chung-yi, Taipei Times
While Tsai’s campaign has been hurt by a series of allegations about her running mate Su Jia-chyuan’s (蘇嘉全) farmhouse in Pingtung County, it appeared she had more than made up for it during her 11-day campaign trip on the west coast, said Chen Jin-ji (陳錦稷), director of the Taiwan Brain Trust’s poll center, adding that Ma’s re-election campaign has suffered devastating blows because of his peace agreement proposal.
Tsai enjoys a large lead in southern Taiwan in a head-to-head battle, leading Ma by 17.9 percentage points in Yunlin, Chiayi and Greater Tainan, and 27.2 percentage points in Greater Kaohsiung and Pingtung, the survey showed.
She also holds the advantage among voters in the 20-39 age group, with a 15.4 point lead in the 20-29 age bracket, and leads by 7.6 points in the 30-39 bracket.
Despite Tsai trailing among female voters by 3.6 percentage points, the poll result is the best ever performance for any DPP presidential candidate, Taiwan Brain Trust chief executive Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said.
Economic voting behavior was one of the most crucial reasons contributing to the DPP’s landslide loss in the 2008 presidential election, as financially challenged voters tend to favor a change in government, said Kenneth Lin (林向愷), an economics professor at National Taiwan University.
If that theory applies in the upcoming election, Lin said, the same things could happen again because most of the respondents were not happy with the economic performance of the Ma administration and said they were pessimistic about Taiwan’s economic prospects.
The same survey found that more than half of the respondents are unhappy with Ma’s -performance on fighting the increasing wealth gap, unemployment and commodity prices, with 57.1 percent saying they were not satisfied with Ma’s economic performance and 56.9 percent saying Ma favored big business.
More than 70 percent of respondents described the nation’s unemployment situation as “serious” or “very serious” and 53.5 percent are concerned about losing jobs or being forced to take unpaid leave within the next six months.
“Countries around the world are suffering from economic downturns and turbulence. However, what concerns me the most is that, unlike other countries, expectations for the future have been lacking among Taiwanese,” Taiwan Brain Trust founder and former presidential adviser Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏) said.
That is why a regime change seems inevitable, he said, especially after Soong’s entry into the presidential election.
“From what I’ve seen, Ma has had no hope of being re-elected since Soong made his bid official,” Koo said.
The poll collected 1,071 samples with a 3 percent margin of error.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
‘MALIGN PURPOSE’: Governments around the world conduct espionage operations, but China’s is different, as its ultimate goal is annexation, a think tank head said Taiwan is facing a growing existential threat from its own people spying for China, experts said, as the government seeks to toughen measures to stop Beijing’s infiltration efforts and deter Taiwanese turncoats. While Beijing and Taipei have been spying on each other for years, experts said that espionage posed a bigger threat to Taiwan due to the risk of a Chinese attack. Taiwan’s intelligence agency said China used “diverse channels and tactics” to infiltrate the nation’s military, government agencies and pro-China organizations. The main targets were retired and active members of the military, persuaded by money, blackmail or pro-China ideology to steal
RSS