HKU POP SITE releases popularity figures of CE Donald Tsang, HKSAR Government, Executive Councilors, Under Secretaries and Political AssistantsBack
| Press Release on November 3, 2009 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | Latest Figures | (1) Popularity Figures of CE Donald Tsang and the HKSAR Government | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Abstract The latest survey conducted by the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong shows that CE Donald Tsang's support rating and approval rate have both dropped to record low since he became CE. In terms of total sample, his support rating has dropped below 50 for the first time, while his net approval rate now stands at negative 14 percentage points. As for the popularity of the SAR Government, compared to a month ago, people's dissatisfaction rate has surged by 10 percentage points to reach its record high since January 2005. The government's net popularity has plummeted to negative 12 percentage points. Director of POP Robert Chung has already pointed out in 2003 that 「a political figure with less than 50 marks can be said to have fallen into negative popularity, while a score of less than 45 marks can indicate credibility crisis」. Using this analysis, Tsang is not yet facing a credibility crisis, but he has to be careful. The survey also finds that the popularity ratings of the 「top 5」 non-official Executive Councillors have remained very stable, except Leung Chun-ying whose popularity rating has registered a significant decrease. The relative rankings of all councillors have remained exactly the same. They are, in descending order, Ronald Arculli, Leung Chun-ying, Cheng Yiu-tong, Lau Kong-wah and Lau Wong-fat occupying from the 1st to 5th places. As for the Under Secretaries and Political Assistants, the survey finds that all 9 old and new Under Secretaries have above-zero recognition rates, while 5 out of 9 Political Assistants have zero recognition. The situation is exactly like that three months ago, without any progress. No official has a recognition rate up to 3%, meaning that people are still not familiar with the team. The sampling errors of percentages registered fall between +/-1% and +/- 3% while those of ratings are between +/-1.4 and +/-1.6. The response rate of the latest survey is 73%.
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| Latest Figures POP today releases on schedule via the "POP SITE" the latest popularity figures of CE Donald Tsang, HKSAR Government, Executive Councilors, Under Secretaries and Political Assistants. As a general practice, all 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-2009. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (1) Popularity Figures of CE Donald Tsang and the HKSAR Government Herewith the contact information for the latest survey on the popularity figures of CE Donald Tsang and HKSAR Government:
Recent popularity figures of Donald Tsang and people's satisfaction of the overall performance of the HKSAR Government are summarized as follows:
** Collapsed from a 5-point scale. ^ The polling cycle for different items varies. Parallel comparison across items should be synchronized. ^^ These questions only use sub-samples of the survey concerned. The sub-sample sizes of questions on CE's support rating and hypothetical voting were 735 and 742 respectively. # Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level, meaning that they are statistically significant prima facie. However, whether numerical differences are statistically significant or not is not the same as whether they are practically useful or meaningful. The latest survey conducted in late-October showed that, CE Donald Tsang scored 48.4 marks, and 35% supported him as the Chief Executive while another 49% opposed. Regarding people's appraisal of the overall performance of the HKSAR Government, the latest figures revealed that 27% were satisfied, whereas 39% were dissatisfied. Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of POP, observed, 「Our latest survey shows that CE Donald Tsang's support rating and approval rate have both dropped to record low since he became CE. In terms of total sample, his support rating has dropped below 50 for the first time, while his net approval rate now stands at negative 14 percentage points. As for the popularity of the SAR Government, compared to a month ago, people's dissatisfaction rate has surged by 10 percentage points to reach its record high since January 2005. The government's net popularity has plummeted to negative 12 percentage points. Regarding the reasons for CE's popularity plunge, the following table of sub-sample figures across different stages of the survey may be quite telling:
^^ Sampling errors for different sub-samples vary with their sizes. All errors have been reported in detail, calculated at 95% confidence level, meaning 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. Whether numerical differences are statistically significant or not is not the same as whether they are practically useful or meaningful. On May 14, 2003, I published an article on 「The Popularity of Tung Chee-hwa from All Angles」. I pointed out that "a political figure with less than 50 marks can be said to have fallen into negative popularity, while a score of less than 45 marks can indicate credibility crisis" (see "POP Column" in the POP Site). Using this analysis, Tsang is not yet facing a credibility crisis, but he has to be careful. According to our records, the support rating of Former CE Tung Chee-hwa first dropped below 45 marks in March 2003, and couldn't clear himself of this dangerous zone until July 2004. During the same period, Tung's approval rate has basically remained below 20%. His popularity remained negative until he left office.」 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
(2) Top 5 members of Executive Council Herewith the contact information for the latest survey on the Top 5 members of Executive Council:
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-October. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 5 non-official Executive Councillors whom they knew best. Leung Chun-ying, Lau Wong-fat, Cheng Yiu-tong, Lau Kong Wah, Ronald Arculli, Anthony Cheung, Laura M Cha, Lawrence Lau Juen-yee, V Nee Yeh and Anna Wu Hung-yuk 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 late October, 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 councillor in terms of recognition rate was dropped; the remaining 5 were then ranked according to their support ratings attained to become the top 5 Executive Councillors. Recent ratings of the top 5 members of Executive Council are summarized as follows:
** Ratings with recognition rates not reaching top 5 in either stage of survey are not available. [ ] Number in square brackets indicates rankings. # Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level, meaning that they are statistically significant prima facie. However, whether numerical differences are statistically significant or not is not the same as whether they are practically useful or meaningful. The latest survey conducted in late-October showed that Ronald Arculli was the most popularly supported non-official Executive Councillor, attaining 50.9 marks. The 2nd to 4th ranks went to Leung Chun-ying, Cheng Yiu-tong and Lau Kong-wah, with 44.7, 41.9 and 41.5 marks respectively. The 5th rank went to Lau Wong-fat with 37.8 marks. The mean score obtained by these top 5 non-official Executive Councillors was 43.4 marks. For this latest survey, Anthony Cheung obtained a support rating of 49.6 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:
** 「Overall ranking」 is first determined by their number of times on top 10, and then their average ratings. ^ Ratings with recognition rates not reaching top 5 in either stage of survey are not available. The overall rankings in the past year showed that four non-official Executive Councillors have been on the list for four times. Ronald Arculli, Leung Chun-ying, Cheung Yiu-yong and Lau Kong-wah achieved an average rating of 53.7, 48.0, 46.3 and 45.9 marks, Lau Wong-fat and Anthony Cheung have been on the list for three and one time(s) respectively. They ranked 5th and 6th with 40.6 and 55.2 marks in corresponding order. Director of POP Robert Chung observed, 「Compared to three months ago, the popularity ratings of the "top 5" non-official Executive Councillors have remained very stable, except Leung Chun-ying whose popularity rating has registered a significant decrease. The relative rankings of all councillors have remained exactly the same. They are, in descending order, Ronald Arculli, Leung Chun-ying, Cheng Yiu-tong, Lau Kong-wah and Lau Wong-fat occupying from the 1st to 5th places. It should be noted, however, that our list of "top five" only includes non-official councillors best known to the public, ranked according to their support ratings. Some of the other councillors may well have very high or low support ratings, but because they are not the most well-known councillors, they do not appear on the list by design. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of these popularity ratings, we leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using the detailed records displayed in the "Opinion Daily" of our POP Site.」 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
(3) Under Secretaries and Political Assistants 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:
* Calculated at 95% confidence level using full sample size. 「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. Herewith the result of our latest survey on 「people's most familiar Under Secretaries」:
# Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level, meaning that they are statistically significant prima facie. However, whether numerical differences are statistically significant or not is not the same as whether they are practically useful or meaningful. ## The percentages of respondents who could name Florence Hui Hiu-fai and Julia Leung Fung-yee were 0.32% and 0.27% respectively. Hence Florence Hui ranked the 8th while Julia Leung was placed at 9th rank. ^ On October 22, 2009 the goverrnment announced the appointment of Adeline Wong Ching-man as the Under Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, and Lai Tung-kwok as the Under Secretary for Security. POP immediately included them in the survey, with a sub-sample size of 385 cases. Sample errors re-calculated. ^^ Raymond Tam Chi-yuen became the Director of the Chief Executive's Office on August 1, 2009. Herewith the result of our latest survey on 「people's most familiar Political Assistants」:
# Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level, meaning that they are statistically significant prima facie. However, whether numerical differences are statistically significant or not is not the same as whether they are practically useful or meaningful. In our naming survey conducted in late October, respondents could name, unaided, Under Secretaries and Political Assistants whom they knew best. Results showed that all nine Under Secretaries were mentioned, they were Kitty Poon, Kenneth Chen, Adeline Wong, Yau Shing-mu, Gregory So, Gabriel Matthew Leung, Lai Tung-kwok, Florence Hui and Julia Leung. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were 2.3%, 2.1%, 1.9%, 1.7%, 1.5%, 1.2%, 1.0% and two obtaining less than 1%. Yet, 78.6% of the respondents could not recall any names of Under Secretaries. As for Political Assistants, only four Political Assistants were mentioned, they were Zandra Mok, Victor Lo, Jeremy Young and Raymond Cheung. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were all less than 1%. Yet, 92.8% of the respondents could not recall any names of Political Assistants. Director of POP Robert Chung observed, 「In our latest survey, all 9 old and new Under Secretaries have above-zero recognition rates, while 5 out of 9 Political Assistants have zero recognition. The situation is exactly like that three months ago, without any progress. No official has a recognition rate up to 3%, meaning that people are still not familiar with the team. 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.」 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Next Release (Tentative)
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| Abstract | Latest Figures | (1) Popularity Figures of CE Donald Tsang and the HKSAR Government | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
