HKU POP SITE releases survey findings on the Executive Councilors, Under Secretaries and Political AssistantsBack

The Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong conducted a double stage survey on the ranking of non-official Executive Councillors, Under Secretaries and Political Assistants in July, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. The surveys find that compared to three months ago, the popularity ratings of 'top 5' non-official Executive Councillors have all dropped significantly, but their relative rankings have remained stable. Ronald Arculli and Leung Chun-ying continue to rank first and second, while Cheng Yiu-tong and Lau Kong-wah swap positions to occupy the 3rd and 4th places. Lau Wong-fat continues to stay at the 5th place. Regarding Under Secretaries and Political Assistants, it was found that all 8 Under Secretaries have above-zero recognition rates, which is already a progress. However, 5 out of 9 Political Assistants have zero recognition, this is a backward slip. As no official has a recognition rate up to 4%, people are still not that familiar with the team. A year has passed since the government announced the appointment of these officials, but over one-quarter of them still have zero recognition. The situation is not good. The sampling errors of the ratings registered fall between +/-1.4 and 1.7 while the response rate of the rating survey is 69%.

POP today releases on schedule via the "POP SITE" the latest ratings of the Top 5 members of Executive Council. 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 5 Executive Councilors" is similar to that of our "Top 10" series, it is explained in detail under "Survey Method" in our 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 mid-July. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 5 non-official Executive Councillors whom they knew best. Leung Chun-ying, Lau Kong Wah, Lau Wong-fat, Cheng Yiu-tong, Ronald Arculli, Anthony Cheung, Laura M Cha, Lawrence Lau Juen-yee, Anna Wu Hung-yuk and Charles Lee were the ten most frequently mentioned councillors. Please refer to the relevant table in our website for the rest of the list. Those 6 who were named most frequently then entered into the second stage rating survey. During the second stage rating survey conducted in second half of July, respondents were asked to rate each short-listed councillor 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 1 councillors in terms of recognition rate was dropped; the remaining 6 were then ranked according to their support ratings attained to become the top 6 Executive Councillors. Recent ratings of the top 5 members of Executive Council are summarized as follows:

The latest survey conducted in second-half of July showed that Ronald Arculli was the most popularly supported non-official Executive Councillor, attaining 51.1 marks. The 2nd to 4th ranks went to Leung Chun-ying, Cheng Yiu-tong and Lau Kong-wah, with 46.7, 42.6 and 41.4 marks respectively. The 5th rank went to Lau Wong-fat with 37.6 marks. The mean score obtained by these top 5 non-official Executive Councillors was 43.9 marks. For this latest survey, Anthony Cheung obtained a support rating of 49.0 marks, but he was dropped due to his relatively low recognition rate. The overall ratings ranked according to results obtained over the past year are tabulated as follows:

In May 2008, the HKSAR Government announced the list of newly employed Under Secretaries and Political Assistants. POP has now conducted a survey once every three months to gauge people's familiarity with these officials, as a test of their popularity. Herewith the contact information for the survey:

Herewith the result of our latest survey on "people's most familiar Under Secretaries":

Herewith the result of our latest survey on "people's most familiar Political Assistants":

In our naming survey conducted in mid-July, respondents could name, unaided, Under Secretaries and Political Assistants whom they knew best. Results showed that all eight Under Secretaries were mentioned, they were Gregory So, Chen Wei-on, Gabriel Matthew Leung, Kitty Poon, Julia Leung, Raymond Tam Chi-yuen, Yau Shing-mu and Florence Hui. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were 3.1%, 2.0%, 1.5%, 1.2% and four obtaining less than 1%. Yet, 86.0% of the respondents could not recall any names of Under Secretaries. As for Political Assistants, only four Political Assistants were mentioned, they were Jeremy Young, Zandra Mok, Katherine Ng and Frankie Yip. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were all less than 1%. Yet, 94.9% of the respondents could not recall any names of Political Assistants.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "In our latest survey, all 8 Under Secretaries have above-zero recognition rates, which is already a progress. However, 5 out of 9 Political Assistants have zero recognition, this is a backward slip. As no official has a recognition rate up to 4%, people are still not that familiar with the team. A year has passed since the government announced the appointment of these officials, but over one-quarter of them still have zero recognition. The situation is not good. It should be noted, however, that our ranking of recognition is based on respondents' ability to name these officials unaided. This kind of familiarity measurement is not the same as prompted ratings, and the results may not necessarily indicate people's support of these officials. In other words, those high on the list may not be the most supported figures, while those lower down may have a different ranking if we use a prompting method. As for the reasons affecting the popularity of these officials, we leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using the detailed records displayed in the 'Opinion Daily' of our POP Site."

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