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Press Release on August 23, 2016

| Detailed Findings (Rating of the Top Ten Political Figures in Mainland China and Taiwan) |

Special Announcements

1. The Public Opinion Programme (POP) of The University of Hong Kong yesterday released the interim report of a study related to “2016 Legislative Council Election Rolling Survey”. The results of the study showed that the p-values of the t-test between “read one name” and “read two names” lie between 0.072 and 0.996, meaning that at 95% confidence level there is no significant difference between the two sets of figures. In other words, we can choose to continue to “read one name” or change to “read two names” method without worrying about adjustments to the data previously collected. We balanced the validity of scientific evidence, public expectation and peoples’ reaction of the interim report, and finally decided to change to “read two names” method for the remaining survey. We understand that opinion surveys are assets of civic society, so if the public does not agree to its design, its result would be useless, and the operation of opinion surveys would also be affected. POP has approached the problem of reading names in the most scientific, open and honest way. POP remains absolutely neutral to all candidates and groups, and treats them equally.

2. Rumours fly around elections. One rumour alleged a staff from POP admitted that POP "boosted” the support rates of pro-establishment candidates in order to canvassing votes for the democrats, while some commentators regurgitate a fake old story that POP had received secret funding from the Internet Watch Foundation. POP hereby reiterates that such rumours are complete fabrications. The election surveys conducted by POP are completely open and transparent. News agents reporting those rumours as plain facts would only discredit themselves.

Abstract

POP conducted a double stage survey on the rankings of the top 10 political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan in August, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that compared to 5 months ago, the rankings of the top 10 cross-strait political figures have not changed much. On the awareness level, Tsai Ing-wen passes the recognition benchmark for the first time and enters the list to replace Lee Teng-hui, thus the split between Mainland and Taiwan figures remains the same, at a 7:3 split. In terms of support rating, among the 9 figures who continue to stay on the list, 5 have risen while 4 have dropped, but all changes are within sampling error. As for the relative rankings, Zhu Rongji, Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping continue to rank 1st to 3rd. Hu Jintao and Li Keqiang swap positions to rank 4th and 5th. Ma Ying-jeou remains at 6th unchanged. Tsai Ing-wen enters the list for the first time to rank 7th. Jiang Zemin drops one position to rank 8th. Li Peng and Chen Shui-bian remain unchanged to rank 9th and 10th. It should be noted that our list of “top 10 cross-strait political figures” only includes those best known to the Hong Kong public, ranked according to their support ratings. Other political figures may have very high or low support ratings, but they are excluded from the list because they are relatively less well-known. The maximum sampling error of all rating figures is +/-3.0 marks at 95% confidence level. The response rate of the rating survey is 72%.

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 1,004 successful interviews, not 1,004 x 72.4% response rate, while the sample size of the second stage rating survey is other 1,000 successful interviews, not 1,000 x 71.7% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake.

[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. When quoting these figures, journalists can state “sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-3.0 at 95% confidence level”.

[4] Because of sampling errors in conducting the survey(s) and the rounding procedures in processing the data, the figures cannot be too precise, and the totals may not be completely accurate. Therefore, when quoting percentages of the survey(s), journalists should refrain from reporting decimal places, but when quoting the rating figures, one decimal place can be used.

[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.

Latest Figures

POP today releases the latest findings of popularity of cross-strait political figures. From 2014, POP enhanced the previous simple weighting method based on age and gender distribution to “rim weighting” based on age, gender and education (highest level attended) distribution. The latest figures released today have been rim-weighted according to provisional figures obtained from the Census and Statistics Department regarding the gender-age distribution of the Hong Kong population in 2015 year-end and the educational attainment (highest level attended) distribution collected in the 2011 Census. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:

[6] 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.

The research design of our “Top 10 political figures of Mainland China and Taiwan” has been explained in detail under “Survey Method” in our corresponding web site. The top political figures listed in our latest survey were all those who 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 figures whom they knew best. Xi Jinping, Tsai Ing-wen, Ma Ying-jeou, Li Keqiang and Hu Jintao were mentioned most frequently. Please refer to the relevant table for the rest of the list. The 12 most frequently mentioned political figures were then entered into the second stage of the survey conducted in mid-August, during which respondents were asked to rate each political figure 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 political figures in terms of recognition rate were dropped; the remaining 10 were then ranked according to their support ratings attained to become the top 10 political figures. For easy reference, the POP Site has already displayed the results of all naming surveys conducted since June 1997. Recent ratings of the top political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan are summarized as follows:

[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 +/-3.0 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures. The error margin of previous survey can be found at the POP Site. {} Number in square brackets indicates rankings.

[8] Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level under the same weighting method, 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.

[9] Ratings with recognition rates not reaching top 10 in either stage of survey are not listed.

Latest survey revealed that, among the ten most well-known political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan, in terms of popularity rating, Zhu Rongji ranked first, attaining 69.1 marks. The 2nd rank went to Wen Jiabao with a score of 62.8 marks. Xi Jinping, Hu Jintao, Li Keqiang, Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai Ing-wen occupied the 3rd to 7th ranks with 59.7, 57.7, 57.5, 55.9 and 52.9 marks correspondingly. The 8th to 10th ranks fell to Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Chen Shui-bian with respective scores of 49.7, 40.0 and 25.7 marks. For this latest survey, Wang Qishan and Lee Teng-hui obtained support ratings of 55.3 and 39.8 marks respectively, but they were dropped due to their relatively low recognition rates. The mean score obtained by the top 5 political figures was 61.4 marks, while that for the top 10 was 53.1 marks. As for the overall ratings ranked according to results obtained over the past four surveys are tabulated as follows:

[10] “Average rating” is the average of all ratings obtained by political figures over the past 18 months.

[11] “Overall ranking” is first determined by their number of times on top 10, and then their average ratings.

The overall rankings in the past four surveys showed that eight political figures have been on the list for four times. Zhu Rongji ranked first, achieving an average rating of 69.0 marks, Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping ranked 2nd to 3rd, attaining 63.0 and 61.6 marks correspondingly, Li Keqiang, Hu Jintao, Ma Ying-Jeou, Jiang Zemin and Chen Shui-bian who ranked 4th to 8th with respective scores of 58.8, 57.9, 53.9, 47.1 and 24.3 marks. Lee Teng-hui has been on the list three times, ranked the 9th with an average rating of 39.8 marks. Lien Chan and Li Peng have been on the list twice, ranked the 10th and 11th with respective scores of 49.4 and 38.8 marks. Tsai Ing-wen has been on the list once, ranked the 12th with a score of 52.9 marks.

Opinion Daily

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 March 21 to 24, 2016 while the latest survey was conducted from August 12 to 18, 2016. 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.

Commentary

Frank Wai-Kin Lee, Research Manager of POP, observed, “Compared to 5 months ago, the rankings of the top 10 cross-strait political figures have not changed much. On the awareness level, Tsai Ing-wen passes the recognition benchmark for the first time and enters the list to replace Lee Teng-hui, thus the split between Mainland and Taiwan figures remains the same, at a 7:3 split. In terms of support rating, among the 9 figures who continue to stay on the list, 5 have risen while 4 have dropped, but all changes are within sampling error. As for the relative rankings, Zhu Rongji, Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping continue to rank 1st to 3rd. Hu Jintao and Li Keqiang swap positions to rank 4th and 5th. Ma Ying-jeou remains at 6th unchanged. Tsai Ing-wen enters the list for the first time to rank 7th. Jiang Zemin drops one position to rank 8th. Li Peng and Chen Shui-bian remain unchanged to rank 9th and 10th. It should be noted that our list of ‘top 10 cross-strait political figures’ only includes those best known to the Hong Kong public, ranked according to their support ratings. Other political figures may have very high or low support ratings, but they are excluded from the list because they are relatively less well-known. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of different figures, we leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using the detailed records displayed in our ‘Opinion Daily’.”

Future Release (Tentative)

• August 30, 2016 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and HKSAR Government

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No. of hits since Jan 1, 2018: 490,742

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Everything carried in this website does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong. Dr Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, is responsible for everything posted herewith, except for column articles and messages posted at the opinion platforms. Any responsibility, legal and otherwise, arising from any such item shall vest entirely with its author. The intellectual property of all information contained in this website, including questionnaire design and research reports, originally belongs to HKU POP unless specified otherwise. HKU POP opens their copyright to the world via this website, but would request all users to acknowledge their source properly.

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Last update :  26/6/2019