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

POP conducted a double stage survey on the rating of Legislative Councillors in mid April to early May, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. Our latest surveys show that compared to three months ago, the 'top 10' best known Legislative Councillors have remained the same, while the popularity of most of them have gone up. Those with significant increases include Leung Kwok-hung, Wong Yuk-man, Albert Ho, Jasper Tsang and Audrey Eu, up by 7.9, 4.7, 3.2, 2.9 and 2.7 marks respectively, that of Regina Ip has dropped 2.1 marks significantly, while other changes were within sampling errors. In terms of relative rankings, Jasper Tsang moves up one position to top the list for the first time. Audrey Eu moves up one place to rank second, Regina Ip goes down two places to rank third. Albert Ho goes up four positions to rank fourth. Emily Lau remains on the fifth place. Lee Cheuk-yan goes down two places to rank sixth. Alan Leong and Tam Yiu-chung each goes down one place to rank seventh and eighth. The relative rankings of Leung Kwok-hung and Wong Yuk-man have not changed, occupying the ninth and tenth positions respectively. It should be noted however 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 +/-1.8 and +/-2.6 at 95% confidence level, while the response rate of the rating survey is 65%.

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 1,034 successful interviews, not 1,034 x 65.0% response rate, while that of the second stage rating survey is 1,034 successful interviews, not 1,034 x 64.8% 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 +/-2.6 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 2011 year-end. Herewith the contact information:

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 mid April. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 legislators whom they knew best. As a result, Leung Kwok-hung, Wong Yuk-man, Albert Ho, Audrey Eu and Alan Leong 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 end of April, 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 showed that Jasper Tsang was the most popularly supported councillor attaining 59.0 marks. Audrey Eu, Regina Ip and Albert Ho ranked the 2nd to 4th with 58.7, 58.5 and 53.8 marks correspondingly. The 5th to 8th ranks went to Emily Lau, Lee Cheuk-yan, Alan Leong and Tam Yiu-chung who attained 53.3, 53.0, 52.2 and 51.8 marks respectively. Leung Kwok-hung and Wong Yuk-man ranked the 9th to 10th, attaining 35.2 and 31.1 marks respectively. The mean score obtained by the top 5 councillors was 56.7 marks, while that for the top 10 was 50.7 marks. For this latest survey, Tanya Chan and Albert Chan obtained support ratings of 53.6 and 36.2 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 9 Legislative Councillors have been on the list for four times. They are Regina Ip in the top rank achieving an average rating of 59.3 marks, Audrey Eu, Jasper Tsang, Alan Leong, Emily Lau, Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho who ranked the 2nd to 7th and attained 57.7, 56.5, 54.3, 53.8, 52.7 and 52.5 marks correspondingly. Leung Kwok-hung and Wong Yuk-man ranked the 8th and 9th, with a respective of 32.7 and 32.1 marks. Tam Yiu-chung has been on the list for three times, attaining 52.1 marks on average, and ranked the 10th. James To has been on the list for one time and ranked the 11th attaining 55.4 marks.

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 26 to 31 January, 2012 while this survey was conducted from 24 April to 2 May, 2012. 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, the 'top 10' best known Legislative Councillors have remained the same, while the popularity of most of them have gone up. Those with significant increases include Leung Kwok-hung, Wong Yuk-man, Albert Ho, Jasper Tsang and Audrey Eu, up by 7.9, 4.7, 3.2, 2.9 and 2.7 marks respectively, that of Regina Ip has dropped 2.1 marks significantly, while other changes were within sampling errors. In terms of relative rankings, Jasper Tsang moves up one position to top the list for the first time. Audrey Eu moves up one place to rank second, Regina Ip goes down two places to rank third. Albert Ho goes up four positions to rank fourth. Emily Lau remains on the fifth place. Lee Cheuk-yan goes down two places to rank sixth. Alan Leong and Tam Yiu-chung each goes down one place to rank seventh and eighth. The relative rankings of Leung Kwok-hung and Wong Yuk-man have not changed, occupying the ninth and tenth positions respectively. It should be noted however 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."

• May 15, 2012 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and Principal Officials