HKU POP releases popularity figures of CE and principal officialsBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong interviewed 1,012 Hong Kong people between June 3 and 5, 2013 by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. Our survey shows that all popularity figures of CE CY Leung remain exactly the same as those registered two weeks ago, and can be taken as a coincidence. CE’s support rating now stands at 46.7 marks, approval rate at 30%, disapproval rate at 54%, giving a net popularity of negative 24 percentage points. His popularity in general has remained at the low side. As for the Secretaries of Departments, the latest support rating of CS Carrie Lam is 60.8 marks, her approval rate 58%, disapproval rate 8%, and net popularity positive 50 percentage points. As for FS John Tsang, his latest support rating is 54.9 marks, approval rate 46%, disapproval rate 19%, and net popularity positive 27 percentage points. As for SJ Rimsky Yuen, his support rating is 49.0 marks, approval rate 23%, disapproval rate 15%, giving a net popularity of positive 8 percentage points. Carrie Lam remains to be the most popular Secretary of Department. As for the Directors of Bureaux, compared to one month ago, the net approval rates of 8 of the 12 Directors have gone up and 4 have gone down. Among them, Secretary for Education Eddie Ng, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung, Secretary for the Environment Wong Kam-sing and Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok registered significant changes in net approval rates, up by 12, 11 and 7 percentage points and down by 11 percentage points respectively. The popularity figures of Lai Tung-kwok are at the poorest since he became Secretary for Security. Among all the Directors, only Eddie Ng and Paul Chan registered negative popularity, at negative 19 and 27 percentage points respectively. Ko Wing-man continues to be the most popular Director. According to POP’s standard, Ko Wing-man falls under the category of “ideal” performer, Carrie Lam now falls under the category of “successful” performer. The performance of John Tsang, Matthew Cheung, Anthony Cheung, Lai Tung-kwok, Wong Kam-sing, Tsang Tak-sing, Eddie Ng and Paul Chan can be labeled as “mediocre”, that of Ceajer Chan, Raymond Tam, Rimsky Yuen, Gregory So and Paul Tang can be labeled as “inconspicuous”. CY Leung falls into the category of “depressing” performer, while no one falls into that of “disastrous”. The maximum sampling errors of all approval and disapproval rates is +/-4 percentage points at 95% confidence level, while the sampling error of rating figures and net approval rates need another calculation. The response rate of the survey is 65%.

[6] Errors are calculated at 95% confidence level using full sample size. “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. Questions using only sub-samples would have bigger sampling error. Sampling errors of ratings and net approval rates are calculated according to the distribution of the scores collected.

[7] Based on 95% confidence interval.

[8] 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 rating not more than +/-1.6, sampling error of percentages not more than +/-3%, sampling error of net approval rates not more than +/-6% at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures. The error margin of previous survey can be found at the POP Site.
[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] The survey conducted on 27/2/2013 was the instant survey after the Budget Speech and only asked rating of FS as well as his vote of confidence.
[11] The frequency of this series of questions is different from that of CE popularity ratings. Comparisons, if made, should be synchronized using the same intervals. Starting from 2011, these questions only uses sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned, the sample size for each question also varies.
[12] 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 +/-2.0, sampling error of percentages not more than +/-4%, sampling error of net approval rates not more than +/-6% at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures. The error margin of previous survey can be found at the POP Site.
[13] 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.

Latest popularity figures of Directors of Bureaux under the accountability system are summarized below, in descending order of net approval rates:

[14] Starting from 2006, these questions only uses sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned, the sample size for each question also varies.
[15] 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 percentages not more than +/-4% and sampling error of net approval rates not more than +/-7% at 95% confidence level” when quoting the above figures. The error margin of previous survey can be found at the POP Site.
[16] 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.
[17] In two decimal place, the respective net approval rates of Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Gregory So and Secretary for the Civil Service Paul Tang are 5.01 and 4.98 percentage points. Thus, they are ranked eighth and ninth respectively.

The latest survey showed that, CE CY Leung scored 46.7 marks, and 30% supported him as CE, his net approval rate is negative 24 percentage points. Meanwhile, the corresponding ratings of CS Carrie Lam, FS John Tsang and SJ Rimsky Yuen were 60.8, 54.9 and 49.0 marks, and 58%, 46% and 23% would vote for their reappointment correspondingly. Their net approval rates are positive 50, 27 and 8 percentage points respectively.

As for the Directors of Bureaux, according to the net approval rates, results revealed that the top position goes to Secretary for Food and Health Ko Wing-man, attaining positive 72 percentage points. The 2nd to 4th places belong to Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Ceajer Chan, Secretary for Transport and Housing Anthony Cheung and Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung, with net approval rates positive 32, positive 30 and positive 28 percentage points respectively. Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok, Secretary for the Environment Wong Kam-sing, Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Raymond Tam, Secretary for the Civil Service Paul Tang, Secretary for Home Affairs Tsang Tak-sing, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Gregory So, Secretary for Education Eddie Ng and Secretary for Development Paul Chan ranked 5th to 12th, their corresponding net approval rates are positive 25, positive 23, positive 11, positive 9, positive 8, positive 4, negative 19 and negative 27 percentage points. In other words, only Ko Wing-man scored net approval rate of over 50% among all Directors of Bureaux.

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 let readers 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 each day starting from July 24, a record of significant events of that day, according to the research method designed by POP. These daily entries would be uploaded to "Opinion Daily" as soon as they are verified by POP.

For the polling items covered in this press release, the previous survey of some items was conducted from 2 to 7 May, 2013 while this survey was conducted from 3 to 5 June, 2013. During this period, 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.

Note: The following commentary was written by Director of POP, Robert Chung.

Our latest survey shows that all popularity figures of CE CY Leung remain exactly the same as those registered two weeks ago, and can be taken as a coincidence. CE’s support rating now stands at 46.7 marks, approval rate at 30%, disapproval rate at 54%, giving a net popularity of negative 24 percentage points. His popularity in general has remained at the low side.

As for the Secretaries of Departments, the latest support rating of CS Carrie Lam is 60.8 marks, her approval rate 58%, disapproval rate 8%, and net popularity positive 50 percentage points. As for FS John Tsang, his latest support rating is 54.9 marks, approval rate 46%, disapproval rate 19%, and net popularity positive 27 percentage points. As for SJ Rimsky Yuen, his support rating is 49.0 marks, approval rate 23%, disapproval rate 15%, giving a net popularity of positive 8 percentage points. Carrie Lam remains to be the most popular Secretary of Department.

As for the Directors of Bureaux, compared to one month ago, the net approval rates of 8 of the 12 Directors have gone up and 4 have gone down. Among them, Secretary for Education Eddie Ng, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung, Secretary for the Environment Wong Kam-sing and Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok registered significant changes in net approval rates, up by 12, 11 and 7 percentage points and down by 11 percentage points respectively. The popularity figures of Lai Tung-kwok are at the poorest since he became Secretary for Security. Among all the Directors, only Eddie Ng and Paul Chan registered negative popularity, at negative 19 and 27 percentage points respectively. Ko Wing-man continues to be the most popular Director.

According to POP’s standard, Ko Wing-man falls under the category of “ideal” performer, Carrie Lam now falls under the category of “successful” performer. The performance of John Tsang, Matthew Cheung, Anthony Cheung, Lai Tung-kwok, Wong Kam-sing, Tsang Tak-sing, Eddie Ng and Paul Chan can be labeled as “mediocre”, that of Ceajer Chan, Raymond Tam, Rimsky Yuen, Gregory So and Paul Tang can be labeled as “inconspicuous”. CY Leung falls into the category of “depressing” performer, while no one falls into that of “disastrous”.

The following table summarizes the grading of CE and the principal officials for readers' easy reference:

[18] In one decimal place, the respective approval rates of Secretary for Transport and Housing Anthony Cheung and Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok are 42.8 and 42.6 percentage points.
[19] In one decimal place, the respective approval rates of SJ Rimsky Yuen and Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Gregory So are 23.5 and 22.5 percentage points.

• June 18, 2013 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Hong Kong people's ethnic identity