Among eight Asia-Pacific countries and regions, only Taiwan prefers US President Donald Trump over his challenger, former US vice president Joe Biden, in the upcoming US presidential election, a survey released on Thursday showed.
According to the poll published by UK-based market research firm YouGov, 42 percent of Taiwanese favor Trump in the Nov. 3 election, while 30 percent back Biden and 28 percent have no opinion.
In contrast, respondents in Malaysia favor Biden over Trump 62 percent to 9 percent, and in Singapore by 66 percent to 12 percent, the survey showed.
Biden also led Trump in Australia (60 percent to 21 percent), Indonesia (63 percent to 12 percent), the Philippines (47 percent to 24 percent) and Thailand (59 percent to 14 percent), the poll showed.
Apart from Taiwan, the highest level of support for Trump was in Hong Kong with 36 percent, but even there, 42 percent of the respondents said they favored Biden of the Democratic Party, the survey showed.
On the question of who respondents thought was most likely to win the presidential election, 37 percent of the respondents in Hong Kong said Trump, whereas 25 percent picked Biden.
In Taiwan, 45 percent of respondents said they see Trump as the winner, and 29 percent think Biden would defeat him, the poll showed.
In the other six countries, the majority of respondents said they think Biden would win.
About 42 percent of respondents in Taiwan said they favored Trump because they think that US relations with Taiwan and the rest of the region would advance under his administration, and 41 percent said the US economy would improve with him.
However, 26 percent said that Biden would do a better job combating climate change and tackling the COVID-19 pandemic, while 28 percent said he would be better at promoting peace in the world, the poll showed.
The YouGov survey was conducted from Sept. 24 to Oct. 5 with sample groups of 1,003 to 2,092 in each of the eight regions.
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