HKU POP releases the results of a public opinion survey related to the Chief Executive Election 2012Back

In August 2011, Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong was commissioned by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Centre Limited to conduct a "Survey on Chief Executive Election 2012". The objective of this survey was to understand citizen's support level of two potential candidates of the CE election 2012, namely Henry Tang and Leung Chun-ying. The target population of this survey was Cantonese-speaking population of Hong Kong of age 18 or above.

The research instrument was designed independently by the POP Team. All matters relating to fieldwork operation and data analysis were also designed and handled independently by the POP Team, without interference from any outside party. In other words, POP was given full autonomy to design and conduct the survey, and POP would take full responsibility for all the findings reported.

POP understands that, there should be other people considering to take part in the CE election 2012. However, since no individual has officially declared his/her candidancy, there should not be any issue of unfairness.

POP interviewed 1,000 Hong Kong people between August 16 and 18 by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that 43% respondents supported Henry Tang to be the CE, 41% opposed, giving a net support rate of positive 2 percentage points, 16% respondents were uncertain. In terms of suitability, his aggregated average rating is 50.8 marks (with an error of +/-1.51 marks at 95% confidence level), and the overall recognition rate of Henry Tang is 95%. As for Leung Chun-ying, 42% respondents supported him to be the CE whereas 38% opposed, giving a net support rate of positive 4 percentage points, 20% were uncertain. In terms of suitability, his aggregated average rating is 52.0 marks (with an error of +/-1.42 marks at 95% confidence level). Leung Chun-ying's overall recognition rate is 91%.

In summary, the support rates and suitability ratings of Henry Tang and Leung Chun-ying as two potential CE election 2012 candidates are very similar, with no statistically significant difference observed. In terms of uncertainties in the support rates and suitability ratings, people are more familiar with Henry Tang than Leung Chun-ying. Henry Tang's support rate is also slightly higher than that of Leung Chun-ying, yet the difference is not statistically significant, whereas Leung Chun-ying obtained slightly higher marks in suitability rating than Henry Tang, but again the difference is not statistically significant. The maximum sampling error of all percentages is below +/-3% at 95% confidence level, while that of rating figures needs another calculation. The response rate of the survey is 65%.

The research methodology and all survey findings is entirely transparent and released via the HKU POP site (http://hkupop.pori.hk) for public consumption. POP welcome all readers to visit the website for details of the survey, to use the same methodology to verify the results of this survey, and even apply the same methodology to other possible candidates of CE election 2012. Should there be any quiries, please contact Mr Cheung Chi Kong, at [email protected], who is the person in charge of the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Centre, which commissioned the survey.