HKU POP SITE releases the latest figures on the ratings of the Chief Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and the Financial Secretary Antony Leung Kam-chungBack

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 the ratings of the Chief Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and the Financial Secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung. Since last 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 and time of our next release will be March 19, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest ratings of the CE and the top ten political groups, people's satisfaction with the freedom of the press, and the credibility rating of the news media in general will be released. Then, on March 26, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, we will release the latest figures on people's satisfaction with the HKSAR government, its Secretaries, and members of the Legislative and Executive Councils in general.

According to the latest figures released today, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's rating has dropped, when compared to his term as the FS, after his appointment as the CS last May. However, his rating has re-gained gradually to the current level of over 65 since its trough of 62.4 registered last November. As revealed by our instant survey of people's reaction to the FS Antony Leung Kam-chung's Budget conducted on March 6, the latest support rating of Donald Tsang is 65.1, fairly similar to that obtained in mid-February.

As regards the ratings of the FS Antony Leung Kam-chung, our latest survey result shows that although only 47% of the respondents showed initial satisfaction with his Budget (please refer to our POP Site release dated March 7), Leung's rating has increased dramatically right after his Budget Address, reaching a record high of 63.4 since his appointment as the FS. In a macro view, Leung's rating has been fluctuating within a narrow margin of around 58 marks before he officially reported duty as the FS. It then dropped to a record low of 53.5 registered last November, then climbed gradually to reach its current peak.

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 support ratings for Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and Antony Leung Kam-chung is less than plus/minus 1.2 marks. 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 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.