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

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong conducted a double stage survey on the ranking of Legislative Councillors in July, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. Our latest survey conducted shortly after the end of Legco session this year shows that the popularity ratings of Hong Kong people's most familiar 'top 10 Legco members' have all increased, although their relative rankings have not changed much. Albert Chan who entered 'top 10' first time in our last survey to occupy the 8th position has dropped out again due to his relatively low recognition rate. He is replaced by Lau Kwong-wah who enters the list for the first time. In terms of absolute ratings, compared to 3 months ago, the ratings of all Legco members have climbed beyond sampling errors, with the exception of Chairman Jasper Tsang. Emily Lau registers the biggest jump of 6.2 marks, to reach her record high rating since August 2000. In terms of relative rankings, Audrey Eu continues to occupy the first place while Alan Leong and Regina Ip continue to rank second and third respectively. For others remaining on the list, their relative positions have changed no more than one place up or down. The sampling errors of the ratings registered fall between +/-1.3 and 1.8 while the response rate of the rating survey is 67%.

Points to note:
* The address of the "HKU POP SITE" is http://hkupop.pori.hk, journalists can check out the details of the survey there.
* The sample size of the first stage naming survey is 1,006 successful interviews, not 1,006 x 68.8% response rate, while the sample size of the second stage rating survey is 1,010 successful interviews, not 1,010 x 67.4% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake.
* "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 +/-1.8 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the rating figures. In view of the error margins, one decimal place can be used when quoting these rating figures.
* 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 10 Legislative Councillors. As a general practice, all figures have already been weighted according to provisional figures obtained from the Census and Statistics Department regarding the gender-age distribution of the Hong Kong population in 2008 year-end. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:

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 early-July. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 legislators whom they knew best. Wong Yuk-man, Leung Kwok-hung, Audrey Eu, Emily Lau and Lee Cheuk-yan 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 mid-July, 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:

The latest survey conducted in mid-July showed that Audrey Eu was the most popularly supported councillor attaining 63.0 marks while Alan Leong and Regina Ip ranked the 2nd and 3rd with 60.9 and 60.8 marks correspondingly. The 4th to 8th ranks went to Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, Emily Lau, Jasper Tsang and Lau Kong-wah who attained 58.9, 57.7, 57.0, 54.9 and 52.8 marks respectively. The 9th and 10th ranks went to Wong Yuk-man and Leung Kwok-hung who attained 38.9 and 34.5 marks respectively. The mean score obtained by the top 5 councillors was 60.3 marks, while that for the top 10 was 53.9 marks. For this latest survey, Fred Li and Albert Chan obtained support ratings of 59.6 and 46.0 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 eight Legislative Councillors have been on the list for four times. They are Audrey Eu in the top rank achieving an average rating of 61.0 marks, Regina Ip, Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, Emily Lau, Jasper Tsang, Wong Yuk-man and Leung Kwok-hung who ranked the 2nd to 8th and attained 56.8, 56.7, 56.3, 52.7, 51.3, 39.8 and 35.5 marks correspondingly. Alan Leong have been on the list for three times and ranked the 9th with 59.3 marks. Andrew Cheng, Fred Li, Lau Kwong-wah, Tam Yiu-chung and Albert Chan have been on the list once and ranked the 10th to 14th with 56.8, 56.4, 52.8, 52.2 and 41.2 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 April 21 to 23, 2009 while this survey was conducted from July 14 to 18, 2009. 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.

• July 28, 2009 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and HKSARG