HKU POP SITE releases the latest figures on CE's rating and people's satisfaction with the SAR Government, its secretaries, and members of the Executive CouncilBack

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 survey figures on CE's rating, people's satisfaction with the HKSAR Government, its secretaries, and members of the SAR Executive Council in general. The figures on government secretaries and Exco members are released on-line for the first time (although they had been carried in our monthly newsletter the "POP Express" before).　Since the beginning of this month, our POP Site has been releasing the results of our regular surveys every Tuesday at 2 pm, except during public holidays, each time with a forecast of the items to be released in the next two weeks. The POP Site will review and adjust this operation regularly, readers are welcome to leave their comments here.

According to this schedule, the date of our next release will be February 26, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm. The results of our latest tracking surveys on CE's rating and people's ratings on four subjective freedom indicators, namely, speech, press, publication, and demonstration, will be released. Then, on March 5, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, we will release the latest ratings of the top ten Legislative Councillors.

According to the latest figures released today, CE Tung Chee-hwa's rating registered in early February is 56.1, which is 1.6 marks higher than that of mid-January. This shows that although the upward trend of CE's rating since December last year has become leveled in mid-January, it has climbed again, probably due to the effect of Tung's consultation sessions with Election Committee members in his quest for the second term as CE. As regards people's appraisal of the government's performance, our tracking surveys show that satisfaction figures have continued to increase since a trough recorded last September. On the contrary, dissatisfaction has dropped three consecutive months since it peaked between September and November last year. Our latest finding shows that 27% of the population are satisfied with the government's performance, but a considerably higher portion of 37% are dissatisfied.

Regarding people's satisfaction with the performance of government secretaries, our latest finding (in early January) reveals that satisfaction has rebound after its continual decline since March last year. On the other hand, compared with the figure recorded in November last year, the number of people who are dissatisfied has decreased for about five percentage points. In early January, 21% were satisfied with the performance of government secretaries, but a considerably higher portion of 33% were not. On a macro level (please see the charts with per-poll figures), people's satisfaction with the performance of the secretaries in the first six months after the handover could be considered as a stepwise decline, from between 40% to 50% down to 15%. It then fluctuated between 20% to 30% until April 2000, after which it dropped three times, then climbed four secretaries has changed continuously in the past 12 months.

As to the overall performance of the Executive Councillors, our latest figures registered in early January show that 15% were satisfied with their performance, while 33% were not. On a macro level (please see the charts with per-poll figures), after the handover, people's satisfaction with the Executive Councillors has remained rather stable between 15% and 25%, while their dissatisfaction has also remained stable between 25% and 35%. Those who replied "don't know / hard to say" is normally around 20% or more, meaning that many people know very little about the Executive Councillors.

All new surveys reported in the POP Site today are random telephone surveys conducted by interviewers, targeting at Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. The sample size of all surveys is over 1,000 respondents. At 95% confidence level, the sampling error of all percentages is less than plus/minus 3 percentage points, while that of Chief Executive's rating is less than plus/minus 1.4 marks. That means 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 be able to provide additional comments. Such an arrangement would be reviewed when more resources are available. Please note that Dr CHUNG Ting-yiu Robert, Director of Public Opinion Programme, is solely responsible for the work published in the POP Site, which does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong.