HKU POP SITE releases the latest figures on the ratings of the most well-known political groups, and people's confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future and "one country, two systems"Back

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 figures on the ratings of the most well-known political groups, people's confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future, and "one country, two systems". 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 September 10, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa and Principal Officials under the accountability system will be released. We will also release the latest results on people's satisfaction with the freedom of press and their appraisal of the credibility of the news media in Hong Kong.

As regards the latest (August 14-19) ratings of the most well-known political groups, the top three on the list were Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (FTU), Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (CTU) and Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood (ADPL), attaining 57.8, 56.9 and 54.8 marks respectively. Democratic Party (DP) and Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) ranked the fourth and the fifth, with support ratings of 52.5 and 52.4 marks respectively. The sixth to the ninth ranks fell to Liberal Party (LP), Frontier, Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement in China (HKASPDMC) and April Fifth Action (AFA) correspondingly. Since the tenth-ranking political group failed to reach the 50% benchmark recognition rate, it was dropped from the list. (For details, please refer to the explanations in the subsequent paragraph, as well as under "Survey Method" in our corresponding web page.) The mean score obtained by the top five political groups was 54.9 marks, fairly similar to that obtained in mid-May.

Furthermore, the latest results of mid-August revealed that 48% of the respondents had no confidence in the future of Hong Kong. The figure has reached a record high, and for the first time has overtaken the "confidence" figure. Only 41% of the respondents were confident in the future of Hong Kong, which has dropped for three consecutive times since April. The accumulated drop was 15 percentage points. With respect to people's confidence in the future of China, the figures registered in mid-August showed that 78% expressed confidence, which was an increase of 5 percentage points from that of mid-June, and was much higher than that for Hong Kong's future. On the other hand, 56% of the respondents were confident in "one country, two systems", 31% were not. These figures have remained stable over the past two months.

The research design of our "Most well-known political groups" has been explained in detail under "Survey Method" in our corresponding web page. The top political groups listed in our latest survey were all those which obtained highest unprompted mentions in our first stage naming survey conducted in early August. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 political groups whom they knew best. Democratic Party (DP), Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), Liberal Party (LP), Frontier and Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood (ADPL) were mentioned most frequently. Please refer to the relevant table for the rest of the list. The twelve most frequently mentioned political groups were then entered into the second stage of the survey, which was conducted in mid-August. During that second stage survey, respondents were asked to rate each political group 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 two political groups in terms of recognition rate were dropped, leaving behind the top 10. Finally, any group which failed to reach the 50% benchmark recognition rate was also dropped. It should be noted that because political groups are not yet legal entities in Hong Kong, such definitions are rather vague, and so-called political groups are constantly evolving. As a result, strange names may appear in the list of groups mentioned by respondents in Stage One surveys. In order to avoid personal bias, except for some obviously non-existent or disbanded groups, our research team will only eliminate groups which fall outside the popular definition after the first stage of the survey. To facilitate readers follow our research process step by step, the POP Site has already displayed the result of all naming surveys conducted since year 2000.

The new survey reported 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 over 1,000 respondents. At 95% confidence level, the sampling error of the ratings of the most well-known political groups is less than plus/minus 1.8 marks, while that of all percentages is less than plus/minus 3 percentage points. 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 comment on the findings at this stage. 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.