HKU POP SITE releases focus analyses of the First CE Election Forum Instant PollBack

Press Release on March 14, 2007

Special Announcement

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong is now preparing for the Chief Executive election debate instant survey, to be conducted during the debate on March 15. Our figures will be sent to sponsors instantly and continuously 10 minutes after the debate starts, they will also be uploaded to our "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) some days later. Potential sponsors please call Miss Pang at 2859-2988 for more details.

Background

On March 1, 2007, POP conducted the first Chief Executive election forum instant poll. Without affecting the research autonomy of POP, part of the cost of the instant poll was covered by sponsorship from Cable TV, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Economic Journal and Wen Wai Po. According to our sponsorship agreement, the findings of the instant poll were first used by the sponsors, and then published at the POP Site some days later, as part of POP's public service. POP considers this to be a multi-win arrangement, because the media get what they want, while we can serve the public and obtain research data for academic studies at the same time. POP hereby acknowledges all sponsors' support with great thanks.
On the night of the instant poll, POP has already sent to all sponsors the frequency and cross-tabulation analyses of the four key questions. Time segment analyses were subsequently conducted, they were uploaded onto the POP Site some time ago. The focus analyses carried in this release comprise time segment analyses according to two variables, namely, respondents' political alignment and their education attainment, in order to paint a multi-dimensional picture of candidates' performance at the forum.

Charts

In this press release, we focus on different audiences' evaluation of the performance of the two candidates at the election forum held on March 1. We have singled out the factors of respondents' political inclination and their education level, because after going through various CE election surveys conducted by us, we find them to be important factors worth noting. Readers who would like to study the effects of other demographic variables can check them out at our POP Site.

Because the March 15 CE election debate is fast approaching, POP hopes that the information contained in this release would help the public analyze the performance of the two candidates at the forthcoming debate. In our forthcoming instant poll, we will also add in time segment analyses by demographic variables, for sponsor's exclusive use at first, and then for public consumption at our POP Site days later.

To start with, the contact information of the instant poll conducted on March 1 is as follows:

Date of survey	Overall sample size	Response rate	Maximum Sampling error of percentages*
1/3/2007	510	68.0%	+/- 4%

* "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 overall performance of candidates' performance according to 5-minute segments is as follows:

Evaluation of candidates' performance by respondents with different political alignments, according to 15-minute segments is as follows:

Evaluation of candidates' performance by respondents with different education attainment, according to 15-minute segments is as follows:

Concluding Remarks

Regarding the above-mentioned focus analysis, POP will not provide any commentary, but the general public is welcome to raise questions for us to follow-up. Please email them to us at <[email protected]>. Please note that everything carried in the POP Site does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong. Dr Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of POP, is responsible for everything posted herewith, except for column articles which represent the stand of their authors.