HKU POP releases the latest ratings of the Top 10 Legislative CouncillorsBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong conducted a double stage survey on the ratings of Legislative Councillors in April, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. The survey shows that compared to three months ago, probably due to the shift in public attention from CE's integrity to dock workers' protests, in terms of familiarity, James Tien, Paul Tse and Albert Chan who ranked fourth, seventh and tenth last time have dropped out of the "top 10" list and replaced by James To, Alan Leong and Lee Cheuk-yan. In terms of absolute ratings, only Chan Yuen-han and Alan Leong registered changes in ratings beyond sampling errors, down by 2.2 marks and up by 1.9 marks respectively. In terms of relative rankings, Jasper Tsang and Chan Yuen-han swapped positions to rank first and second. Regina Ip continues to rank third. James To, Alan Leong and Lee Cheuk-yan who return to the list occupy the fourth, fifth and seventh positions. Emily Lau goes down one position to rank sixth. Albert Ho and Wong Yuk-man go down two positions to rank eighth and tenth respectively, while Leung Kwok-hung remains at the ninth position. It should be noted however that our list of "top 10" only includes Legco members who are best known to the public, ranked according to their support ratings. Some of the other 60 councillors may well have very high or low support ratings, but because they are not the most well-known councillors, they do not appear on the "top 10" list by design. The maximum sampling errors of the ratings registered fall between +/-1.7and +/-2.3 at 95% confidence level, while the response rate of the rating survey is 69%.

Points to note:
[1] The address of the "HKU POP SITE" is http://hkupop.pori.hk, journalists can check out the details of the survey there.
[2] The sample size of the first stage naming survey is 1,007 successful interviews, not 1,007 x 65.9% response rate, while that of the second stage rating survey is 1,023 successful interviews, not 1,023 x 68.6% response rate.
[3] "95% confidence level" means 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. Media can state "sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-2.3 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the rating figures.
[4] Because of sampling errors in conducting the survey, and rounding procedures in collating the figures, when quoting the rating figures of this survey, one decimal place can be used, in order to match the precision level of the figures.
[5] The data of this survey is collected by means of random telephone interviews conducted by real interviewers, not by any interactive voice system (IVS). If a research organization uses "computerized random telephone survey" to camouflage its IVS operation, it should be considered unprofessional.

POP today releases on schedule via the "POP SITE" the latest popularity figures of the top ten Legislative Councillors. As a general practice, all figures have been weighted according to provisional figures obtained from the Census and Statistics Department regarding the gender-age distribution of the Hong Kong population in 2012 year-end. Herewith the contact information:

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 early April. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 legislators whom they knew best. As a result, Leung Kwok-hung, Wong Yuk-man, Emily Lau, Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho 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. During the second stage rating survey conducted in mid-April, 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; the remaining 10 were then ranked according to their support ratings attained to become the top 10 Legislative Councillors. For easy reference, the POP Site has already displayed the results of all naming surveys conducted since the year 1998. Recent ratings of top 10 Legislative Councillors are summarized below:

[7] All error figures in the table are calculated at 95% confidence level. "95% confidence level" means 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. Media can state "sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-2.3 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures. Numbers in square brackets { } indicates rankings. The error margin of previous survey can be found at the POP Site. Starting from 2011, these questions only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned, with variable sub-sample size for each question. In latest survey, the sub-sample size of the questions varies between 597 and 690, and its effect has already been reflected in the sampling errors.
[8] Ratings with recognition rates not reaching top 10 in either stage of survey are not available.
[9] Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level, meaning that they are statistically significant prima facie. However, whether numerical differences are statistically significant or not is not the same as whether they are practically useful or meaningful.
[10] In two decimal places, the rating of Wong Yuk-man is 35.62 and that of Leung Kwok-hung is 35.58.
[11] Not a Legislative Councillor during the survey period.

The latest survey showed that Jasper Tsang was the most popularly supported councillor attaining 55.7 marks. Chan Yuen-han, Regina Ip and James To ranked the 2nd to 4th with 55.5, 55.2 and 54.6 marks correspondingly. The 5th to 7th ranks went to Alan Leong, Emily Lau and Lee Cheuk-yan who attained 53.0, 50.8 and 50.3 marks respectively. Albert Ho, Leung Kwok-hung and Wong Yuk-man ranked the 8th to 10th, attaining 49.1, 36.3 and 34.4 marks respectively. The mean score obtained by the top 5 councillors was 54.8 marks, while that for the top 10 was 49.5 marks. For this latest survey, Tam Yiu-chung and Albert Chan obtained support ratings of 47.3 and 39.3 marks respectively, but they were dropped due to their relatively low recognition rates. The overall ratings ranked according to results obtained over the past 12 calendar months are tabulated as follows:

[12] "Average rating" is the average of all ratings obtained by Legislative Councillors over the past 12 months.
[13] "Overall ranking" is first determined by their number of times on top 10, and then their average ratings.
[14] Not a Legislative Councillor during the survey period.

The overall rankings in the past 12 months showed that 6 Legislative Councillors have been on the list for four times. They are Jasper Tsang in the top rank achieving an average rating of 56.1 marks, Regina Ip, Emily Lau, Albert Ho, Leung Kwok-hung and Wong Yuk-man who ranked the 2nd to 6th and attained 53.8, 50.7, 49.0, 36.2 and 36.1 marks correspondingly. Chan Yuen-han, Alan Leong, Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Chan have been on the list for three times and ranked the 7th to 10th, with 56.7, 52.6, 51.4 and 37.3 marks. Audrey Eu, James To, James Tien and Paul Tse have been on the list once and ranked the 11th to 14th attaining 57.4, 54.6, 52.7 and 46.7 marks.

In January 2007, POP opened a feature page called "Opinion Daily" at the "POP Site", to record significant events and selected polling figures on a day-to-day basis, in order to provide readers with accurate information so that they can judge by themselves the reasons for the ups and downs of different opinion figures. In July 2007, POP collaborated with Wisers Information Limited whereby Wisers supplies to POP since July 24 each day a record of significant events of that day, according to the research method designed by POP. These daily entries would be uploaded to the "Opinion Daily" feature page as soon as they are verified by POP.

For the polling items covered in this press release, the previous survey was conducted from 15 to 21 January, 2013. while this survey was conducted from 15 to 18 April, 2013. In between these two surveys, herewith the significant events selected from counting newspaper headlines and commentaries on a daily basis and covered by at least 25% of the local newspaper articles. Readers can make their own judgment if these significant events have any impacts to different polling figures.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "The latest survey of top 10 Legislative Councillors shows that compared to three months ago, probably due to the shift in public attention from CE's integrity to dock workers' protests, in terms of familiarity, James Tien, Paul Tse and Albert Chan who ranked fourth, seventh and tenth last time have dropped out of the 'top 10' list and replaced by James To, Alan Leong and Lee Cheuk-yan. In terms of absolute ratings, only Chan Yuen-han and Alan Leong registered changes in ratings beyond sampling errors, down by 2.2 marks and up by 1.9 marks respectively. In terms of relative rankings, Jasper Tsang and Chan Yuen-han swapped positions to rank first and second. Regina Ip continues to rank third. James To, Alan Leong and Lee Cheuk-yan who return to the list occupy the fourth, fifth and seventh positions. Emily Lau goes down one position to rank sixth. Albert Ho and Wong Yuk-man go down two positions to rank eighth and tenth respectively, while Leung Kwok-hung remains at the ninth position. It should be noted however that our list of 'top 10' only includes Legco members who are best known to the public, ranked according to their support ratings. Some of the other 60 councillors may well have very high or low support ratings, but because they are not the most well-known councillors, they do not appear on the 'top 10' list by design. We leave it for our readers to figure out the reasons for the ups and downs of these popularity ratings using detailed records shown in our 'Opinion Daily' feature page."

• April 30, 2013 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and HKSAR Government