HKU POP SITE releases the POP-NOW surveyon political reform for the fifth timeBack

Since its establishment in 1991, the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong has been conducting different types of opinion studies on social and political issues, as well as providing research services for different organizations, on condition that POP would design and conduct all studies independently, and could also release the findings for public consumption. In November 2009, POP came into agreement with the "now News Channel" for a project called "Joint Public Opinion Research Project on Political Reform". The main objective of the project is to demonstrate, by focusing on ongoing discussions of political reform, how independent research institute and professional news media investigate, analyze, report and comment on public opinion, including the explanation and promotion of professional ethics of opinion studies. The project comprises conducting regular and ad-hoc opinion surveys and other public opinion studies after the launching of public consultation by the government. The survey results will first be released in the "now News Channel", followed by POP press releases for public consumption. The "now News Channel" agrees to POP uploading these programmes to the POP Site for public education, while POP agrees that "now News Channel" uses these findings for productions without POP's involvement.

The project releases survey results for four times during December 7 to 28, 2009. Today we release the results for the fifth time. Please cite the source of the figures when using them.

The latest findings showed that, 24% of respondents said they support collective resignation of one legislative councilor in each of the five constituencies in order to initiate by-elections and induce a de facto referendum to show public opinion towards the political reform, while 50% oppose it. A comparison of findings from the last two surveys is as follows:

After the Civic Party and League of Social Democrats announced the motion and threshold of the referendum, the support rate of their proposal is as follows:

Results showed that 31% of respondents said they support the proposal while 41% oppose it. The following results are in-depth analyses with reference to the political inclination of the respondents:

Note: The following commentary is extracted and enhanced from the comments made by the Director of Public Opinion Programme Dr Robert Chung on January 18, 2010 in the "now News Channel" programme "News Magazine", in the "now Survey on Political Reform" segment. Some questions and answers are provided by POP.

Q: The latest findings show that only 24% support the proposal of collective resignation in five constituencies, but 31% support using "Adopt true universal suffrage as soon as possible, abolish functional constituencies" as the referendum motion. Are these findings contradictory?

A: There are two crucial questions in this survey. The first question is about the concept of collective resignation and referendum. No significant change of opinion is observed over the past one and half months. The second question relates to specific contents of the referendum campaign, including the motion and its adoption threshold. Although opposition is still dominant, it is lower than opposition of collective resignation in conceptual terms, by 7 percentage points. This shows that the information provided by the Civic Party and the League of Social Democrats has helped to reduce opposition views.

Q: When comparing to the findings of the last survey, the percentage of respondents who answered "half-half" towards the proposal of "collective resignation in five constituencies and de facto referendum" has increased by 3 percentage points, while that in support of it has dropped by 2 percentage points. Does it mean the respondents who "support" collective resignation last time start to change their stance?

A: Respondents who answered "half-half" have increased from 9% to 12%, the change has just slightly exceeded the sampling error in statistical terms. Such a change can be considered as minimal. Recent statements made by the Central Government on collective resignation and referendum have added new unknowns to the issue.

Q: If some citizens claim that they support universal suffrage, but are not familiar with the motion of referendum, what is the relationship between referendum and public opinion?

A: From the perspective of opinion studies, depending on the situation, we will strive for more space to quantify public opinion. There is no referendum law in Hong Kong, to state when the legislature can authorize citizens to vote on public policies through referendums. Therefore, the collective resignation campaign aimed at inducing a de facto referendum can at best be regarded as a large-scale public voting activity, the reference function of which would be self-defined and self-bound by the organizers. This neither violates the law nor the constitution. However, as time goes by, Hong Kong and Mainland China will have to write their own referendum laws, in order to define what issues can be resolved through referendum. The law as it is, Hong Kong's political development can of course not be resolved by referendums, but this does not mean that we cannot explore the idea of referendum, especially when handling district and livelihood issues, which should be a good start.

Q: Should we focus on the results or process of the referendum campaign?

A: The collective resignation campaign can be regarded as a large-scale non-binding public voting activity initiated by the public itself. Its actual effect will have to be defined by the organizers themselves. When it is over, it can be expected that different people will have different assertions and interpretations of the by-election results. Organizers of the referendum campaign will declare their self-proclaimed motion passed or refuted, according to their self-defined benchmarks. Those who opposed the campaign will treat the result in no different way from any other by-election result. In my opinion, if the organizers can peacefully and rationally bring people into discussing referendums and democratic development, the campaign can indeed become a meaningful activity in terms of civic education.