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 July, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. Our latest surveys conducted after the Legislative Council passes the 2012 political reform package show that compared to three months ago, the popularity ratings of all Legco members who have consecutively remained on the list have all increased significantly. Among them, Albert Ho registers the biggest increase of 4.0 marks, followed by Emily Lau, Jasper Tsang, Lee Cheuk-yan and Audrey Eu, whose ratings have gone up by 3.5, 2.8, 2.3 and 2.0 marks respectively. It should be noted that all four Legco members who were eliminated from our survey last time because of their resignation have all returned to the list, but their popularity figures are developing along different paths. Alan Leong has come back to top the list with a rating higher than that 6 months ago, while Albert Chan, Wong Yuk-man and Leung Kwok-hung have come back to retake the same positions before their exit, but each with his record low rating. This probably reflects people's reaction towards different fighting styles. However, it should also be noted that 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. The maximum sampling errors of the ratings registered fall between +/-1.5 and +/-1.9 at 95% confidence level, while the response rate of the rating survey is 64%.

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 1,022 successful interviews, not 1,022 x 63.6% response rate, while that of the second stage rating survey is 1,010 successful interviews, not 1,010 x 64.1% response rate.
[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 +/-1.9 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the rating figures.
[4] When quoting the rating figures of this survey, one decimal place can be used, in order to match the precision level of the figures.
[5] 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 ten Legislative Councillors. 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 2009 year-end. 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 early July. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 legislators whom they knew best. As a result, Wong Yuk-man, Leung Kwok-hung, Audrey Eu, Emily Lau and Albert Ho 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 mid-July, 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 mid-July showed that Alan Leong was the most popularly supported councillor attaining 56.2 marks while Audrey Eu and Albert Ho ranked the 2nd and 3rd with 55.9 and 55.2 marks correspondingly. The 4th to 7th ranks went to Lee Cheuk-yan, Emily Lau, Andrew Cheng and Jasper Tsang, who attained 54.7, 54.3, 54.1 and 53.1 marks respectively. The 8th to 10th went to Albert Chan, Wong Yuk-man and Leung Kwok-hung who attained 33.6, 28.0 and 26.5 marks respectively. The mean score obtained by the top 5 councillors was 55.2 marks, while that for the top 10 was 47.2 marks. For this latest survey, Cheung Man-kwong and Lee Wing-tat obtained support ratings of 54.9 and 53.0 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 five Legislative Councillors have been on the list for four times. They are Audrey Eu in the top rank achieving an average rating of 56.8 marks, Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, Jasper Tsang and Emily Lau who ranked the 2nd to 5th and attained 54.2, 52.7, 52.7 and 52.5 marks correspondingly. Alan Leong, Wong Yuk-man and Leung Kwok-hung have been on the list for three times, attaining 56.7, 32.9 and 30.3 marks on average, and ranked the 6th to 8th. Regina Ip, Tam Yiu-chung and Albert Chan have been on the list for two times, attaining 58.5, 48.7 and 36.1 on average, and ranked the 9th to 11th. Andrew Cheng, Lee Wing-tat, Paul Tse, Lau Wong-fat and Kam Nai-wai have been on the list once and ranked the 12th to 16th, with 54.1, 51.6, 47.5, 42.1 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 April 26 to 29, 2010 while this survey was conducted from July 12 to 15, 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, "Our latest surveys conducted after the Legislative Council passes the 2012 political reform package show that compared to three months ago, the popularity ratings of all Legco members who have consecutively remained on the list have all increased significantly. Among them, Albert Ho registers the biggest increase of 4.0 marks, followed by Emily Lau, Jasper Tsang, Lee Cheuk-yan and Audrey Eu, whose ratings have gone up by 3.5, 2.8, 2.3 and 2.0 marks respectively. It should be noted that all four Legco members who were eliminated from our survey last time because of their resignation have all returned to the list, but their popularity figures are developing along different paths. Alan Leong has come back to top the list with a rating higher than that 6 months ago, while Albert Chan, Wong Yuk-man and Leung Kwok-hung have come back to retake the same positions before their exit, but each with his record low rating. This probably reflects people's reaction towards different fighting styles. However, it should also be noted that 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."

• July 27, 2010 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and HKSAR Government