HKU POP SITE releases the latest ratings of the Top 10 Legislative CouncillorsBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong conducted a double stage survey on the ranking of Legislative Councillors in January, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. Compared to three months ago, our latest "top 10" list has changed a lot. In terms of familiarity, Regina Ip and Kam Nai-wai who occupied the second and ninth positions last time have dropped out of the list, replaced by Tam Yiu-chung and Albert Chan. In terms of absolute ratings, compared to three months ago, the popularity ratings of most "top 10" Legco members have dropped very significantly. According to records in our "Opinion Daily", we may infer that such changes are probably related to the row over political reform and the funding of the Express Rail Link. Those with significant drops over the last two surveys include Audrey Eu, Jasper Tsang, Alan Leong and Lee Cheuk-yan, whose ratings dropped by 7.3, 7.2, 6.3 and 5.6 marks respectively. Emily Lau is the only person whose rating has significantly increased, by 2.4 marks. In terms of relative rankings, Audrey Eu continues to occupy the first place while Alan Leong replaces Regina Ip in the second position. Emily Lau jumps four places to rank third, while the relative positions of all others remaining on the list have changed no more than one place. It should be noted, however, that our survey was conducted before the abortion of the January 27 meeting due to insufficient quorum. Its effect is therefore not reflected in our figures. Since 4 out of 10 councillors in our "top 10" list have resigned, there are bound to be big changes in the result of our next survey. The maximum sampling errors of the ratings registered fall between +/-1.3 and +/-1.7 at 95% confidence level, while the response rate of the rating survey is 67%.

Points to note:
[1] The address of the "HKU POP SITE" is http://hkupop.pori.hk, journalists can check out the details of the survey there.
[2] The sample size of the first stage naming survey is 1,008 successful interviews, not 1,008 x 70.3% response rate, while the sample size of the second stage rating survey is 1,013 successful interviews, not 1,013 x 66.9% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake.
[3] "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. Media can state "sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-1.7 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the rating figures. In view of the error margins, one decimal place can be used when quoting these rating figures.
[4] 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 the "POP SITE" the latest popularity figures of the Top 10 Legislative Councillors. 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 mid-2009. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:

The research design of our "Top 10 Legislative Councillors" has been explained in detail under "Survey Method" in our corresponding 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 the first half of January. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 legislators whom they knew best. Emily Lau, Wong Yuk-man, Leung Kwok-hung, Lau Kong-wah and Audrey Eu were mentioned most frequently. Please refer to the relevant table for the rest of the list. Those 12 who were named most frequently then entered into the second stage rating survey. During the second stage rating survey conducted in the second half of January, respondents were asked to rate each legislator 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 2 legislators in terms of recognition rate were dropped; the remaining 10 were then ranked according to their support ratings attained to become the top 10 Legislative Councillors. For easy reference, the POP Site has already displayed the results of all naming surveys conducted since the year 1998. Recent ratings of top 10 Legislative Councillors are summarized below:

The latest survey conducted in the second half of January showed that Audrey Eu was the most popularly supported councillor attaining 55.1 marks while Alan Leong and Emily Lau ranked the 2nd and 3rd with 53.8 and 53.7 marks correspondingly. The 4th to 7th ranks went to Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, Jasper Tsang and Tam Yiu-chung, who attained 52.1, 51.8, 50.1 and 48.7 marks respectively. The 8th to 10th went to Albert Chan, Wong Yuk-man and Leung Kwok-hung who attained 38.5, 35.3 and 32.8 marks respectively. The mean score obtained by the top 5 councillors was 53.3 marks, while that for the top 10 was 47.2 marks. For this latest survey, Tanya Chan and Lau Kong-wah obtained support ratings of 52.6 and 43.5 marks respectively, but they were dropped due to their relatively low recognition rates. The overall ratings ranked according to results obtained over the past 12 calendar months are tabulated as follows:

The overall rankings in the past 12 months showed that eight Legislative Councillors have been on the list for four times. They are Audrey Eu in the top rank achieving an average rating of 60.1 marks, Alan Leong, Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, Jasper Tsang, Emily Lau, Wong Yuk-man and Leung Kwok-hung who ranked the 2nd to 8th and attained 58.2, 55.9, 54.6, 54.0, 53.2, 36.2 and 32.8 marks correspondingly. Regina Ip and Albert Chan have been on the list for three times and two times respectively, attaining 59.7 and 39.9 marks on average, and ranked the 9th and 10th. Lau Kwong-wah, Tam Yiu-chung and Kam Nai-wai have been on the list once and ranked the 11th to 13th, with 52.8, 48.7 and 32.6 marks correspondingly.

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 provide readers with accurate information so that they can 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 since July 24 each day a record of significant events of that day, according to the research method designed by POP. These daily entries would be uploaded to the "Opinion Daily" feature page as soon as they are verified by POP.

For the polling items covered in this press release, the previous survey was conducted from October 15 to 19, 2009 while this survey was conducted from January 18 to 21, 2010. 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, "Compared to three months ago, our latest "top 10" list has changed a lot. In terms of familiarity, Regina Ip and Kam Nai-wai who occupied the second and ninth positions last time have dropped out of the list, replaced by Tam Yiu-chung and Albert Chan. In terms of absolute ratings, compared to three months ago, the popularity ratings of most "top 10" Legco members have dropped very significantly. According to records in our "Opinion Daily", we may infer that such changes are probably related to the row over political reform and the funding of the Express Rail Link. Those with significant drops over the last two surveys include Audrey Eu, Jasper Tsang, Alan Leong and Lee Cheuk-yan, whose ratings dropped by 7.3, 7.2, 6.3 and 5.6 marks respectively. Emily Lau is the only person whose rating has significantly increased, by 2.4 marks. In terms of relative rankings, Audrey Eu continues to occupy the first place while Alan Leong replaces Regina Ip in the second position. Emily Lau jumps four places to rank third, while the relative positions of all others remaining on the list have changed no more than one place. It should be noted, however, that our survey was conducted before the abortion of the January 27 meeting due to insufficient quorum. Its effect is therefore not reflected in our figures. Moreover, our list of "top 10" only includes Legco members who are best known to the public, ranked according to their support ratings. Some of the other 50 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 "top 10" list by design. We leave it for our readers to figure out the reasons for the ups and downs of these popularity ratings using detailed records shown in our "Opinion Daily" feature page. Since 4 out of 10 councillors in our "top 10" list have resigned, there are bound to be big changes in the result of our next survey."

• February 9, 2010 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and Principal Officials