HKU POP releases the third survey on this year’s BudgetBack

1) The “3.23 Civil Referendum Project” and “3.21 Mock Civil Referendum Project” initiated by the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong will proceed as planned. POP has held its third press conference today (March 20, 2012) to report the arrangement in details and demonstrate the voting process.

2) The “CE Election Guessing Game” hosted by the “PopCon” e-platform (http://popcon.hk) of POP has already been launched, users can now make guesses on the result of the Chief Executive Election due to take place on March 25, until 00:00AM on the election day. The latest situation is that Leung Chun-ying leads Henry Tang and Albert Ho, with guestimates of 602, 409 and 174 votes respectively.

POP interviewed 1,010 Hong Kong people from 7 to 9 March by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that people’s satisfaction with the Budget goes up slightly from 38% in our instant survey to 39% in our second survey, then plummets to 25% in this third survey. Net satisfaction drops from positive 12 percentage points registered in the instant survey to negative 1 percentage point in this survey. People’s rating of the Budget now stands at 53.0 points, poorer than the 57.0 points registered in our instant survey. In terms of specific policies, people remain negative on the relief measures suggested by the FS, and the ability of the Budget to face the risk of external environment. More people continue to consider the Budget has appealed to the middle class and ignored the grassroots, but the majority agrees to this year’s practice of not granting $6,000 to each citizen. Finally, people continue to consider Hong Kong’s tax system fair, but consider the distribution of wealth unreasonable. People’s satisfaction with the government’s fiscal policies remains negative, only 26% are satisfied. The maximum sampling error of all percentages is +/-3 percentage points at 95% confidence level, while the sampling error of rating figure is +/-1.3. The response rate of the survey is 66%.

Since 1992, HKUPOP has already been conducting Policy Address instant surveys every year. From 1998 onwards, we expanded our instant surveys to cover the Budget Talks. In 2008, we revised our research design by splitting up our instant survey into two rounds, while our follow-up survey operation weeks later remains intact, to become the third survey under our new design. Starting 2011, we revised our design to concentrate on people’s appraisal of the Budget and FS’s popularity in our instant survey, and move the remaining questions to our follow-up survey. The third survey released today is the first of its type. We believe this is a better way to study public opinion on these issues: measuring people's instant reaction first, and then repeat these measurements later to find out people's more matured reaction.

For this year’s Budget, in our first survey, we measured people’s overall appraisal of the Budget, their rating of the Budget, and the Financial Secretary’s popularity. Our results were released on February 2. For our second survey, we focus on people’s reactions towards major government proposals, their satisfaction with the government’s fiscal policies, and other relevant issues. Our results were released on February 7 respectively. Today we are releasing the results of our third and last survey.

The findings of the Budget follow-up poll released by the POP SITE today 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 2011 year-end. Herewith the contact information of various surveys:

As different questions involve different sub-samples, the sample errors will vary accordingly. The table below briefly shows the relationship between sampling errors and sample size for the readers to capture the corresponding changes:

Results of the Budget follow-up poll, together with the first two surveys, are tabulated below:

The third survey conducted in early March revealed that, 25% of the respondents were satisfied with the Budget and 26% were dissatisfied. The mean score is 2.9 marks, meaning close to “half-half” in general. The average rating registered for the Budget was 53.0 marks. 26% were satisfied with the government's strategy in monetary arrangement, whereas 43% were dissatisfied. The mean score is 2.7 marks, meaning in between “quite dissatisfied” and “half-half”.

On the other hand, 45% of the respondents said measures suggested by the Financial Secretary to relieve people’s stress brought by the economic downturn were enough to relieve people’s stress, 49% said they were not enough. As for the measures proposed to face the risk of the external environment as mentioned by the Financial Secretary, 27% believed the measures proposed could face the risk, 48% thought the opposite. 51% of the respondents were satisfied with the Financial Secretary not granting $6,000 to each citizen aged 18 or above this year and 32% were dissatisfied. Regarding the saying that the budget plan this year has appealed to the middle class but ignored the grassroots, 46% agreed with this saying whereas 35% disagreed.

With respect to Hong Kong's tax system, 52% considered it fair, whilst 36% thought the opposite. Last of all, 23% perceived the distribution of wealth in Hong Kong reasonable, as contrast to 67% who regarded it unreasonable.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, “Over the years, we find people's receptiveness of the government's Budget drops after it has been debated for some time. This year is no exception, as people’s satisfaction rate goes up slightly from 38% in our instant survey to 39% in our second survey, then plummets to 25% in this third survey. Net satisfaction drops from positive 12 percentage points registered in the instant survey to negative 1 percentage point in this survey. People’s rating of the Budget now stands at 53.0 points, poorer than the 57.0 points registered in our instant survey. In terms of specific policies, people remain negative on the relief measures suggested by the FS, and the ability of the Budget to face the risk of external environment. More people continue to consider the Budget has appealed to the middle class and ignored the grassroots, but the majority agrees to this year’s practice of not granting $6,000 to each citizen. Finally, people continue to consider Hong Kong’s tax system fair, but consider the distribution of wealth unreasonable. People’s satisfaction with the government’s fiscal policies remains negative, only 26% are satisfied.”

• March 27, 2012 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Latest trust and confidence indicators