HKU POP SITE releases popularity figures of Executive Councillors, Under Secretaries and Political AssistantsBack

The latest survey conducted by the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong shows that compared to three months ago, with the recovery of the popularity of the CE and the government from their new lows, the popularity ratings of the "top 5" non-official Executive Councillors have all gone up in parallel. In terms of relative rankings, Cheng Yiu-tong and Lau Kong-wah who occupied the 3rd and 4th places last time have swapped positions, while other positions remain unchanged. The top five places in descending order are Ronald Arculli, Leung Chun-ying, Lau Kong-wah, Cheng Yiu-tong and Lau Wong-fat. As for the Under Secretaries and Political Assistants, the survey finds that 7 out of 9 old and new Under Secretaries have above-zero recognition rates, 6 out of 9 Political Assistants have zero recognition, while no official has a recognition rate up to 2%. All three figures are worse than three months ago. Director of POP Robert Chung announced that since POP's past 7 surveys spanning over 18 months have consistently shown that people practically know nothing about these Under Secretaries and Political Assistants, and the situation seems to be getting worse, POP has decided to stop conducting such surveys in order to deploy its resources to other more meaningful surveys. POP will leave it to other people to monitor the performance of these officials by other scientific means. The maximum sampling errors of percentages cited above fall between +/-1% and +/- 3% while those of ratings are between +/-1.3 and +/-1.8. The response rate of the latest survey is 70%.

POP today releases on schedule via the "POP SITE" the latest popularity figures of 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.

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 early January. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 5 non-official Executive Councillors whom they knew best. Leung Chun-ying, Cheng Yiu-tong, Lau Wong-fat, Lau Kong Wah, Anthony Cheung, Ronald Arculli, Laura M Cha, Lawrence Lau Juen-yee, Anna Wu Hung-yuk and Leong Che-hung 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 mid January, 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:

The latest survey conducted in mid-January showed that Ronald Arculli was the most popularly supported non-official Executive Councillor, attaining 56.5 marks. The 2nd rank went to Leung Chun-ying with 49.2 marks. The 3rd to 5th ranks went to Lau Kong-wah, Cheng Yiu-tong and Lau Wong-fat, with 46.1, 44.9 and 43.7 marks respectively. The mean score obtained by these top 5 non-official Executive Councillors was 48.1 marks. For this latest survey, Anthony Cheung obtained a support rating of 54.1 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:

The overall rankings in the past year showed that five non-official Executive Councillors have been on the list for four times. Ronald Arculli, Leung Chun-ying, Cheung Yiu-yong, Lau Kong-wah and Lau Wong-fat ranked 1st to 5th place respectively. They achieved an average rating of 53.9, 48.0, 45.1, 45.0 and 41.4 marks respectively.

Director of POP Robert Chung observed, "Compared to three months ago, with the recovery of the popularity of the CE and the government from their new lows, the popularity ratings of the "top 5" non-official Executive Councillors have all gone up in parallel. In terms of relative rankings, Cheng Yiu-tong and Lau Kong-wah who occupied the 3rd and 4th places last time have swapped positions, while other positions remain unchanged. The top five places in descending order are Ronald Arculli, Leung Chun-ying, Lau Kong-wah, Cheng Yiu-tong and Lau Wong-fat. 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."

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 early January, respondents could name, unaided, Under Secretaries and Political Assistants whom they knew best. Results showed that seven Under Secretaries were mentioned, they were Gabriel Matthew Leung, Gregory So, Kitty Poon, Kenneth Chen, Julia Leung, Yau Shing-mu and Lai Tung-kwok. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were 1.6%, 1.6%, 1.6%, 0.6%, 0.3%, 0.3% and 0.2%. Yet, 90.1% of the respondents could not recall any names of Under Secretaries. As for Political Assistants, only three Political Assistants were mentioned, they were Zandra Mok, Jeremy Young and Frankie Yip. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were all less than 1%. Yet, 96.7% of the respondents could not recall any names of Political Assistants.

Director of POP Robert Chung observed, 「In our latest survey, 7 out of 9 old and new Under Secretaries have above-zero recognition rates, 6 out of 9 Political Assistants have zero recognition, while no official has a recognition rate up to 2%. All three figures are worse than three months ago. Since our past 7 surveys spanning over 18 months have consistently shown that people practically know nothing about these Under Secretaries and Political Assistants, and the situation seems to be getting worse, we have decided to stop conducting such surveys in order to deploy our resources to other more meaningful surveys. We leave it to other people to monitor the performance of these officials by other scientific means.

• January 21, 2010 (Thursday) 1pm to 2pm: Freedom Indicators
• January 26, 2009 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE Donald Tsang and Principal Officials