People First Party (PFP) presidential candidate James Soong’s (宋楚瑜) support rating has fallen behind that of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), a poll by Taiwan Indicators Survey Research (TISR) showed yesterday.
Since Soong announced his candidacy last month, he had consistently scored above Hung in surveys by different institutions and media outlets. However, the latest survey by TISR showed Hung surpassing Soong by a small margin.
The survey showed that 15.4 percent of respondents said they support Hung, against 14.7 percent for Soong, while 11.8 percent said they would not vote or would cast invalid votes, and 14.7 percent said they are still undecided.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) continued to lead her two rivals, garnering 43.6 percent support.
Compared with last month’s survey, Hung’s support rose by 2.6 percentage points from 12.7 percent, while Tsai’s grew by 6.3 percentage points from 37.3 percent.
In contrast, support for Soong dropped, from 20.5 percent in the first half of last month, immediately following the announcement of his candidacy.
The survey also polled party support for the legislative race taking place on the same date as the presidential election on Jan. 16.
The results showed that most respondents — 35.1 percent — would cast their at-large vote for the DPP, followed by the KMT with 22.1 percent and the PFP with 7.2 percent.
Minority parties are still struggling to reach the 3 percent of the voter threshold to receive government subsidies or the 5 percent threshold to gain representation in the legislature, with the Taiwan Solidarity Union only obtaining 1.9 percent support, the Green Party Taiwan 1.3 percent, the New Power Party 0.3 percent and the Social Democratic Party 0.1 percent, the survey showed.
The survey was conducted from Thursday to Saturday through a random poll, with 1,000 valid samples and a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
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