HKU POP SITE releases rankings of political figuresBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong interviewed 1,001 Hong Kong people between November 19 and 23 by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that Donald Tsang continues to be the most visible political figure in Hong Kong, while Henry Tang and Martin Lee move up 4 and 7 positions respectively to rank 2nd and 3rd, support rates aside. Compared to 6 months ago, 9 people continue to remain on the 'top 10' list. Lee Cheuk-yan who ranked 8th last time drops 5 places and falls out of the list becoming the 13th, while Anson Chan fills the gap after rising 4 places from 13th to become the 9th. Among the 9 political figures who remain on the "top 10" list, 5 of them have their relative rankings changed beyond plus or minus 2 positions. Among them, Martin Lee and Emily Lau register the biggest changes. The former jumps 7 places to occupy the 3rd rank while the latter drops 6 places to the 10th rank. Such ups and downs are good reflections of our changing political environment, especially due to discussions on political reform. If we would like to study long term development, then using overall rankings accumulated over five years would be more appropriate. Figures show that Donald Tsang, Martin Lee, Henry Tang, Leung Kwok-hung, Anson Chan and Emily Lau, are people's most familiar political figures in the long run. It should be noted, however, that our ranking of 「people's most familiar political figures」 is based on our surveys which requested respondents to name local political figures without prompting. This kind of familiarity measurement is not the same as prompted ratings. 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. However, those who scored best in unprompted surveys are no doubt the most well-known political figures in Hong Kong. The sampling error of all percentages is between +/-2 and 3 percentage points at 95% confidence level, while the response rate of the survey is 77%.

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 this survey is 1,001 successful interviews, not 1,001 x 76.7% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake.
* The maximum sampling error of all percentages is +/-2 to 3 percentage points at 95% confidence level. 「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. When quoting these figures, journalists can state 「sampling error of percentages not more than +/-3% at 95% confidence level」.
* When quoting percentages of this survey, journalists should refrain from reporting decimal places, in order to match the precision level of the 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 POP Site the survey results of people's most familiar political figures. This survey has been conducted for many years, with results initially released through our publication POP Express until October 2006 when we began to release them online. Between 1994 and 2005, the survey was conducted and released in the form of 「top 10 political figures」 using our usual 「top 10」 or 「top 5」 series survey design, which involved both naming and rating stages. Starting from October 2005, we simplified our 「top 10 political figures」 survey by just recording and analyzing the 「naming」 results, because we have already developed over time numerous rating surveys covering CE, government officials, members of Legislative and Executive Councils, and so on. As for the rating part, we only conduct supplementary rating surveys to cover those listed in the top 10 political figures but not covered in other rating surveys. Take our latest survey as an example, our supplementary rating survey of Martin Lee and Anson Chan will be conducted later this month, and the results will be uploaded onto our POP Site as soon as they are ready. Moreover, in our presentation of findings, different from the other 「top 10」 rating series, we introduced rankings from 1 to 50 for 「people's most familiar political figures」, as well as average accumulative rankings calculated from the past 10 surveys spanning over about five years, in order to indicate the ups-and-downs of these political figures in the long run. Please refer to our POP Site for details. Herewith the contact information of our latest survey. As a general practice, all figures in the latest survey 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:

Herewith the result of our latest survey on 「people's most familiar political figures」, other rankings beyond the 「Top 10」 can be found in the POP Site:

In our naming survey conducted in the second half of November, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 political figures whom they knew best. Donald Tsang, Henry Tang and Martin Lee were the top three. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were 41%, 35% and 33%. Regina Ip and Jasper Tsang occupied the 4th and 5th places with corresponding recognition rates of 27% and 25%. The 6th to 10th ranks fell to Wong Yuk-man, Leung Kwok-hung, Audrey Eu, Anson Chan and Emily Lau respectively. Their corresponding recognition rates were 22%, 22%, 21%, 20% and 19%. Please refer to the relevant table for the rest of the list. For easy reference, POP Site has already displayed the results of all naming surveys conducted since March 1997.

Herewith some of the results of our 「people's most familiar political figures」 surveys accumulated over past 10 surveys spanning over about five years:

Based on the results of the past 10 surveys, Donald Tsang has the highest overall rank with an average ranking of 1.2. Martin Lee has the 2nd highest overall rank with an average ranking of 3.8. The overall ranks of Henry Tang and Leung Kwok-hung come 3rd and 4th respectively, with average rankings of 5.2 and 7.4. Anson Chan and Emily Lau share the 5th overall rank with an average ranking of 9.1. The 7th to 10th overall ranks go to Audrey Eu, James Tien, Rita Fan and Jasper Tsang, with corresponding average rankings of 9.5, 10.1, 10.4 and 11.1.

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 let readers 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 each day starting from July 24, a record of significant events of that day, according to the research method designed by POP. These daily entries would be uploaded to "Opinion Daily" as soon as they are verified by POP.

For the polling items covered in this press release, the previous survey was conducted from May 19 to 22, 2009 while this survey was conducted from November19 to 23, 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.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, 「The purpose of our ranking of political figures is to show the changing political ecology by studying the ups and downs of people's familiarity with these figures over time. According to our latest survey, Donald Tsang continues to be the most visible political figure in Hong Kong, while Henry Tang and Martin Lee move up 4 and 7 positions respectively to rank 2nd and 3rd, support rates aside. Compared to 6 months ago, 9 people continue to remain on the 'top 10' list. Lee Cheuk-yan who ranked 8th last time drops 5 places and falls out of the list becoming the 13th, while Anson Chan fills the gap after rising 4 places from 13th to become the 9th. Among the 9 political figures who remain on the "top 10" list, 5 of them have their relative rankings changed beyond plus or minus 2 positions. Among them, Martin Lee and Emily Lau register the biggest changes. The former jumps 7 places to occupy the 3rd rank while the latter drops 6 places to the 10th rank. Such ups and downs are good reflections of our changing political environment, especially due to discussions on political reform. If we would like to study long term development, then using overall rankings accumulated over five years would be more appropriate. Figures show that Donald Tsang, Martin Lee, Henry Tang, Leung Kwok-hung, Anson Chan and Emily Lau, are people's most familiar political figures in the long run. It should be noted, however, that our ranking of "people"s most familiar political figures' is based on our surveys which requested respondents to name local political figures without prompting. This kind of familiarity measurement is not the same as prompted ratings. 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. However, those who scored best in unprompted surveys are no doubt the most well-known political figures in Hong Kong. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of these rankings, we leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using the detailed records displayed in our "Opinion Daily".」

• December 8, 2009 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE Donald Tsang and Principal Officials