HKU POP SITE releases for the third consecutive day the daily tracking analyses of CE Election rolling pollBack

Press Release on March 24, 2007

Special Announcement

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong today continues to release the latest figures of the CE Election rolling polls, including the daily tracking figures. However, all figures are analyzed up to March 21. Figures collected after this cut-off dates are used by the sponsors first, before being uploaded onto the "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) for public consumption.

Background

In 1996, the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong conducted many rounds of surveys on the Chief Executive election, most of which were conducted after Tung Chee-hwa formally announced his intention to stand for the election. During the 2005 CE by-election, because a number of well-known political figures had declared their intention to stand, POP therefore also started our CE election polling routine. Between the end of January and early February this year, both Alan Leong and Donald Tsang embarked on their CE election campaigns, POP therefore switched on our CE election series accordingly. In our three rounds of feature survey, respondents were asked to rate the suitability of Leong and Tsang, as well as to vote hypothetically. The results have already been released long ago.

POP's CE Election rolling poll began on February 26 using similar questions, whereby respondents were asked to rate the suitability of the two candidates and to vote hypothetically. The first batch of focus analyses was released on March 9, in the form of 4-day rolling analyses. According to schedule, beginning from March 15, POP increased the daily samples of the polls from 250+ to 350+. On March 21, POP wrapped up the findings again and released them in the form of 4-day and 2-day analyses. One day later, on March 22, POP began to release via the POP Site on a daily basis the latest figures and charts of the rolling poll. Daily tracking figures and charts were released on top of 4-day and 2-day rolling analyses. The latest figures and charts released in the POP Site today also include 4-day rolling, 2-day rolling, and daily tracking analyses. This press release reprints some of those charts for focus analyses. Readers who would like to examine the figures in detail, or to study the effects of various demographic variables can check them out at the POP Site.

It should be noted that as the period of rolling gets shorter, the sample size gets smaller, and the sampling errors get bigger. For this reason, POP did not release 2-day rolling or daily tracking figures before our sample size grew to 350+ daily. Readers are advised to check carefully the contact information and sampling errors of all surveys before using them. Take for example the latest rolling figures released at the POP Site, roughly speaking, the sampling error of all percentages for 4-day rolling samples should not exceed +/-2.6 percentage points, at 95% confidence level using the full sample. For 2-day rolling samples, it should not exceed +/-3.8 percentage points. For daily tracking samples, it should not exceed +/-5.4 percentage points. Sampling errors of rating figures are calculated according to the distribution of the scores collected.

Charts

(1) Across the rolling polls from February 26 to March 21, daily changes of Donald Tsang's support rate with respective to respondents' different political inclinations are as follows:

(2) Across the rolling polls from February 26 to March 21, daily changes of Donald Tsang's support rate with respective to respondents' different educational attainment are as follows:

(3) Across the rolling polls from February 26 to March 21, daily changes of Alan Leong's support rate with respective to respondents' different political inclinations are as follows:

(4) Across the rolling polls from February 26 to March 21, daily changes of Alan Leong's support rate with respective to respondents' different education attainment are as follows:

Commentary

In this press release, we have focused on the extent of support for each candidate with respect to the education level and political inclination of the respondents, because we find them worth-noting after analyzing all our CE election surveys. Moreover, because daily tracking figures can reflect the effect of daily events more accurately within the constraints of sampling errors, they can be mapped with election diaries to study people's changing support of the candidates.

On the four charts carried in this release, Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, made these simple observations: "According to our daily tracking surveys, people's support of the two candidates has remained rather stable up to March 21, the cut-off date covered by this release. Our latest figures show that people's support for Donald Tsang in general continued to rise slowly in the last few days, while that of Alan Leong continued to drop slowly. Both changes, however, are within sampling errors in terms of last day's movement."

Concluding Remarks

Other than questions on the research design of the surveys mentioned, POP will not provide further comments on the findings. We welcome questions for follow-up purpose, 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.

Please note that POP will release the last batch of rolling poll findings next Monday, including the daily tracking figures.