HKU POP SITE releases the latest ratings of the top 10 political groupsBack

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Sponsored by a number of media organizations, we at the Public Opinion Programme (POP) of the University of Hong Kong have already completed our exit poll on the District Council elections, as well as the rolling and exit polls on the Legislative Council by-election for the Hong Kong Island Geographical Constituency. We will complete our follow-up polls on the two elections soon, after which we will proceed to upload our findings onto the "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) for public consumption.

POP today releases on schedule via the POP Site the latest ratings of the top 10 political groups. As a general practice, all the 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 mid-2007. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:

The research design of our "Top ten political groups" has been explained in detail under "Survey Method" in our corresponding web page. The top political groups listed in our latest survey were all those who obtained highest unprompted mentions in our first stage naming survey conducted from November 5 to 9, 2007. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 political groups whom they knew best. Democratic Alliance for Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), Democratic Party (DP), Liberal Party (LP), Civic Party (CP) and The Frontier were mentioned most frequently. Please refer to the relevant table in our website for the rest of the list. The 12 most frequently mentioned political groups then entered into the second stage rating survey. During that second stage survey conducted from November 21 to 26, respondents were asked to rate each political group 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 groups in terms of recognition rate were dropped, leaving behind the top 10. In case any group failed to reach the 50% benchmark recognition rate, it would also be dropped. It should, however, be noted that because political groups are not yet legal entities in Hong Kong, such definitions are rather vague, and so-called political groups are constantly evolving. As a result, strange names may appear in the list of groups mentioned by respondents in Stage One surveys. In order to avoid personal bias, our research team will eliminate groups which fall outside the popular definition only after the first stage of the survey. To facilitate readers follow our research process step by step, the POP Site has already displayed the results of all naming surveys conducted since July 1998. The latest ratings of the top 10 political groups, together with the previous ratings, are summarized below:

Findings obtained in late November showed that, the best-known political group was Democratic Alliance for Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) which attained 52.6 marks. The Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (FTU), Civic Party (CP), Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU), Neighbourhood and Worker's Service Centre (NWS) and Hong Kong Association for Democracy, People's Livelihood (ADPL) ranked 2nd to 6th, achieving 52.3, 51.9, 50.0, 49.7 and 48.9 marks respectively. Meanwhile, the 7th to 10th ranks fell to Democratic Party (DP), Liberal Party (LP), Frontier and April Fifth Action (AFA), with respective scores of 47.0, 46.4, 45.3 and 33.0 marks. The mean score obtained by the top 5 political groups was 51.3 marks. For this latest survey, League of Social Democrats (LSD) and Civil Force (CF) obtained a support rating of 44.1 and 40.7 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: 

The overall rankings in the past 12 months showed that, the top 9 political groups were all listed for four times. FTU was in the top rank, achieving an average rating of 53.0 marks. CP, DAB and HKCTU ranked 2nd to 4th, attaining 51.5, 51.3 and 50.5 marks respectively. Meanwhile, the 5th to 9th ranks fell to ADPL, LP, DP, Frontier and AFA with respective scores of 49.9, 49.4, 48.7, 45.6 and 34.4. HKASPDMC was listed for three times and ranked 10th, attaining 45.1 marks. NWS was listed for one time and ranked 11th.

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. Our purpose is to provide readers with accurate information so that they can judge by themselves the reasons for the ups and downs of different opinion figures. When "Opinion Daily" began to operate on January 17, 2007, it only contained significant events and popularity figures of the Chief Executive over the past few months. As of today, it contains a chronology of events starting from May 1, 2006, and many poll figures registered since January 1, 2006. Readers can now check on the results of 9 different polling items compiled by POP, including the popularity of the Chief Executive, the HKSAR government, and the Secretaries of Departments under the accountability system. In near future, the content of "Opinion Daily" will continue to expand, in order to promote the science of opinion polling.

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, in order to provide readers with swifter and more accurate information.

In August 2007, POP began to include in its regular press releases a list of significant events which happened in between two surveys, so that readers can make their own judgment on whether these events have any effect on the ups and downs of the polling figures. This press release is no exception.

For the polling items covered in this press release, the previous survey was conducted from August 13 to 16, 2007 while this survey was conducted from November 21 to 26, 2007. 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.

Commentary

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "In our second last "Top 10 Political Groups" survey conducted in mid-August, the ranking of DAB has already jumped to the 2nd place. It finally reaches the top in our latest survey, displacing FTU to the 2nd place. A point to note is that the ratings of both DAB and FTU have dropped, while that of Civic Party has slightly increased, as it moves up from the 4th to 3rd place. This means the popularity rating of Civic Party is fairly close to those of DAB and FTU now. A more significant point to note is that the rating of the Liberal Party has plunged 5.9 marks in our latest survey, meaning that its ranking has dropped from the 3rd to 8th place. Its popularity rating of 46.4 is a record low in POP's rating of the Liberal Party and its predecessor "Co-operative Resources Centre" since May 1992. As to what events have affected the ups and downs of the popularity of the political groups, readers can make their own judgment after reading through detailed records placed in our "Opinion Daily". However, in terms of political group development, the District Council elections held on November 18 must have been a critical factor. It should be noted, however, that our "Top 10 Political Groups" only include groups which are best known to the public, ranked according to their support ratings. Other political groups may well have very high or low support ratings, but because they are relatively less well-known, they have not been included in our final list."

News about POP

POP's normal practice is to release the results of our regular surveys every Tuesday afternoon via our POP Site, except during public holidays, each time with a forecast of the items to be released in the next 7 days. According to schedule, our next release of regular survey findings will be December 11, 2007, Tuesday, between 1pm and 2pm, when the latest popularity figures of CE Donald Tsang and Principal Officials will be released. 

It is our general practice to answer all questions on the research design of the surveys published in the POP Site as soon as we receive them, but we will not further comment on the findings. We welcome questions for follow-up purpose, please email them to us at <[email protected]>. We will keep such an arrangement under constant review, suggestions most welcome. 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.

Since January 2006, we have included in our regular press releases a small educational section for the purpose of sharing our research experience with the readers and the general public, and the subject of our education section today is "About HKUPOP".

About HKUPOP

Rating and ranking political groups

The rating and ranking of local political groups were among the earliest surveys conducted by HKUPOP. Our first exercise was conducted in July 1991, shortly after our establishment in June 1991. We have explained the development of these surveys in our press releases of August 24, 2006, February 27, June 5 as well as August 23, 2007. Today, we release it again, so that readers can have a more comprehensive picture of such development.

Elsewhere in the world, it is very natural to monitor the performance of political parties by means of public opinion polling. However, here in Hong Kong, political parties were not, and are not, legal entities. People use vague definitions, and the so-called political groups are constantly evolving. As a result, it would be rather difficult to define political parties in a scientific or legal way. There are apparently three ways to solve this problem. First, let it be defined by the organizations themselves, meaning that those and only those who claimed themselves to be political parties would be treated as political parties. Second, let it be defined by the people, that those considered by the general public as parties would be treated as parties. Third, to avoid the problem by adopting the wider definition of political groups, instead of political parties, when conducting studies.

The surveys on political groups started by HKUPOP basically combine the second and third methods mentioned above. We first screen out the best known political groups recognized by the public, then rate each of them, and then rank them. We first branded our findings as "top 5 political groups" and then as "top 10 political groups" in order to keep pace with Hong Kong's political development. Herewith the details of such surveys: 
· Between July 1991 and November 1992, our surveys of political groups were conducted on an ad hoc basis. However, we have only consolidated our research design, which comprises separate naming and rating surveys in two stages, from November 1992 onwards. 

• In the naming stage, the wordings used in the questionnaire are "Please name up to a certain number of political groups that you are most familiar with." and multiple responses are allowed. In the rating stage, the question used is "Please use a scale of 0-100 to rate your extent of support to a certain group, with 0 indicating absolutely not supportive, 100 indicating absolutely supportive and 50 indicating half-half. How would you rate this group?" 
  
  

• Starting from March 1993, the surveys were conducted once every two months but in November 2000, its frequency was changed to once every three months. It has remained unchanged since then. 
  
  

• Since June 1999, the branding "top 5 political groups" was also changed to "top 10 political groups" which is still being used today. 
  
  

• Regarding the sample size, between July 1991 and April 2000, the sample size of all naming and rating surveys was set at slightly over 500. From May 2000 onwards, it was increased to at least 1,000. 
  
  

• Our first findings of our political group surveys were published in the East Week, which was a magazine on political and economic affairs then. We later published our findings by fax. Then in 1996, HKUPOP published our newsletter POP Express, which naturally carried our findings on this topic. After our HKU POP Site was established in June 2000, we switched to an on-line mode of release after November that year, while all previous findings published in our POP Express were also uploaded on-line in various formats.

| Special Announcement | Latest Figures | Opinion Daily | Commentary | News about POP | About HKUPOP |
| Detailed Findings (Rating of Top Ten Political Groups) |