HKU POP SITE releases the latest popularity ratings of the top ten Legislative CouncillorsBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong today releases on schedule via the "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) the latest popularity ratings of the top 10 Legislative Councillors. POP's normal practice is to release the results of our regular surveys every Tuesday at 2 pm via our POP Site, except during public holidays, each time with a forecast of the items to be released in the forthcoming week. We will review and adjust this operation regularly. According to this schedule, the date and time of our next release will be May 27, 2003, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest rating of CE Tung Chee-hwa, people's satisfaction with CE's policy direction, their appraisal of the performance of the HKSAR Government and members of the Legislative Council in general will be released.

Between May 2 and 7, 2003, POP conducted a random telephone survey which successfully interviewed 1,008 Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. Results showed that Rita Fan, Lau Chin-shek and Selina Chow were the 3 most popularly supported Legislative Councillors, attaining 59.6, 56.9 and 56.8 marks correspondingly. Lee Cheuk-yan and Andrew Wong ranked 4th and 5th, with support ratings of 54.5 and 53.8 marks respectively. The 6th to 10th ranks fell to Szeto Wah, James Tien, Martin Lee, Emily Lau and Jasper Tsang correspondingly. The mean score obtained by the top 5 councillors was 56.3 marks, while that for the top 10 was 53.3 marks, indicating respective drops of 1.3 and 2.1 marks from those of early February.

The research design of our "Top 10 Legislative Councillors" has been explained in detail under "Survey Method" in our corresponding web page. The top councillors listed in our latest survey were all those who obtained the highest unprompted mentions in our first stage naming survey conducted in mid-April (April 16-23). In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 legislators whom they knew best. Emily Lau, Martin Lee, Jasper Tsang, Lee Cheuk-yan and Rita Fan were mentioned most frequently. Please refer to the relevant table for the rest of the list. Those 12 who were named most frequently then entered into the second stage rating survey. Chan Yuen-han, who was the most popular legislator in the last survey, ranked 14th in the first stage naming survey this time, and failed to qualify for the subsequent rating survey.

During the second stage rating survey conducted in early May, respondents were asked to rate each legislator in turn using a 0-100 scale. 0 indicates absolutely no support, 100 indicates absolute support, and 50 means half-half. After calculation, the bottom 2 legislators in terms of recognition rate were dropped, leaving behind the top 10. For easy reference, the POP Site has already displayed the results of all naming surveys conducted since the year 1998.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, made the following observations on the latest round of rating exercises: "Since the new Legislative Council was elected in September 2000, POP has conducted 11 rounds of rating surveys on the popularity of top 10 Legislative Councillors. As Martin Lee, Emily Lau, Szeto Wah, Lee Cheuk-yan, Selina Chow and Andrew Wong are on the list every time, they are clearly the most well known legislators. Rita Fan and Lau Chin-shek show up 10 times, together with Jasper Tsang, James Tien and Chan Yuen-han, the 11 Councillors have almost swept all positions in our top 10 exercises. If we only look at the last 5 exercises, Rita Fan, Selina Chow and Lee Cheuk-yan were among the top 5 throughout. They can be considered as belonging to the "strong-at-the-core" type, because they enjoyed both high support ratings and recognition rates. In our latest survey, Rita Fan topped the list for the first time, and broke the monopoly shared between Lau Chin-shek and Chan Yuen-han. This may have been due to the turning away of people's attention from labour issues to SARS. However, with the disease being brought under control, the situation may change again."

The new poll released in the POP Site today is a random telephone survey conducted by interviewers, targeting at Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. The sample size of the survey is 1,008 respondents. At 95% confidence level, the sampling error of the top 10 legislators is less than plus/minus 1.4 marks, while that for percentages in the naming survey is less than plus/minus 3 percentage points. The meaning of "95% confidence level" is that if we were to repeat a certain survey 100 times, using the same questions each time but with different random samples, we would expect 95 times getting a figure within the error margins specified. Shall anyone have any question regarding the research design of the surveys published in the POP Site, members of the POP Team will be happy to answer them, but we will not further comment on the findings. Shall any person or journalist have any other questions, please email them to us at <[email protected]>. The Director of Public Opinion Programme would answer them as soon as possible. We will keep such an arrangement under constant review, suggestions most welcome. Please note that everything carried in the POP Site does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong. Dr Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, is responsible for everything posted herewith, except for column articles which represent the stand of their authors.