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

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) of the University of Hong Kong conducted a double stage survey on the ratings of Legislative Councillors in late September to early October, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. The survey shows that compared to three months ago, in terms of familiarity, Michael Tien who ranked third last time has dropped out of the 'top 10' list and replaced by Albert Chan. In terms of absolute ratings, the scores of all who stayed on the list have gone down, except Regina Ip whose score has not changed. Those registered decreases in ratings beyond sampling errors include Albert Ho, Wong Yuk-man, Leung Kwok-hung, Emily Lau and Jasper Tsang, down by 6.1, 6.1, 5.4, 3.4 and 1.9 marks respectively. That of Albert Ho has dropped to a personal record low since he first appeared on the 'top 10' list in 2006, probably related to the incident of Cathay Pacific junket in late August. In terms of relative rankings, Jasper Tsang and Regina Ip continue to rank first and second. James Tien and Lee Cheuk-yan each goes up two positions to rank third and fifth. Albert Ho goes up one position to rank seventh. Albert Chan re-enters the list and ranks eighth. The positions of other councillors who stayed on the list remain the same. 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 +/-1.5 and +/-2.4 at 95% confidence level, while the response rate of the rating survey is 66%.

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 1,001 successful interviews, not 1,001 x 63.9% response rate, while that of the second stage rating survey is 1,001successful interviews, not 1,001 x 65.7% 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 +/-2.4 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 2013 mid-year. 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 late September. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 legislators whom they knew best. As a result, Leung Kwok-hung, Wong Yuk-man, Albert Ho, Emily Lau and Tam Yiu-chung 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 late September to early October, 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 +/-2.4 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 550 and 632, 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] In two decimal places, the rating of Regina Ip is 56.45 and that of Michael Tien is 56.35.
[12] In two decimal places, the rating of James Tien is 53.13 and that of Alan Leong is 53.08.

The latest survey showed that Jasper Tsang was the most popularly supported councillor attaining 57.7 marks. Regina Ip, James Tien and Alan Leong ranked the 2nd to 4th with 56.4, 53.1 and 53.1 marks correspondingly. The 5th and 7th ranks went to Lee Cheuk-yan, Emily Lau and Albert Ho who attained 49.8, 48.9 and 43.8 marks respectively. Albert Chan, Leung Kwok-hung and Wong Yuk-man ranked the 8th to 10th, attaining 37.8, 33.7 and 32.9 marks respectively. The mean score obtained by the top 5 councillors was 54.0 marks, while that for the top 10 was 46.7 marks. For this latest survey, James To and Tam Yiu-chung obtained support ratings of 51.3 and 46.8 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:

[13] "Average rating" is the average of all ratings obtained by Legislative Councillors over the past 12 months.
[14] "Overall ranking" is first determined by their number of times on top 10, and then their average ratings.

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 57.6 marks, Regina Ip, Emily Lau, Albert Ho, Leung Kwok-hung and Wong Yuk-man who ranked the 2nd to 6th and attained 55.5, 50.5, 47.8, 36.2 and 35.5 marks correspondingly. Alan Leong, James Tien and Lee Cheuk-yan have been on the list for three times and ranked the 7th to 9th, with 53.5, 53.3 and 50.6 marks. Chan Yuen-han, and Albert Chan have been on the list twice and ranked the 10th to 11th, with 56.6 and 36.3 marks. Michael Tien, James To and Paul Tse have been on the list once and ranked the 12th to 14th attaining 56.4, 54.6 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 12 to 17 July, 2013. while this survey was conducted from 27 September to 3 October, 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, in terms of familiarity, Michael Tien who ranked third last time has dropped out of the 'top 10' list and replaced by Albert Chan. In terms of absolute ratings, the scores of all who stayed on the list have gone down, except Regina Ip whose score has not changed. Those registered decreases in ratings beyond sampling errors include Albert Ho, Wong Yuk-man, Leung Kwok-hung, Emily Lau and Jasper Tsang, down by 6.1, 6.1, 5.4, 3.4 and 1.9 marks respectively. That of Albert Ho has dropped to a personal record low since he first appeared on the 'top 10' list in 2006, probably related to the incident of Cathay Pacific junket in late August. In terms of relative rankings, Jasper Tsang and Regina Ip continue to rank first and second. James Tien and Lee Cheuk-yan each goes up two positions to rank third and fifth. Albert Ho goes up one position to rank seventh. Albert Chan re-enters the list and ranks eighth. The positions of other councillors who stayed on the list remain the same. 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."

• October 15, 2013 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and Principal Officials