HKU POP releases popularity figures of CE Donald Tsang, CE-elect CY Leung and the HKSAR Government Back

(1) The "PopCon" e-platform (http://popcon.hk) hosted by the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong has already added an "Opinion Forum" page. Users are welcome to share personal opinions on latest social issues, and to win prizes with the credits earned. Current topics of the Forum include the termination of filibuster by Jasper Tsang, the provision of two subsidies by Community Care Fund, as well as the inflation of MTR fares. Moreover, please note that starting from today, PopCoin has become the single unified currency of PopCon.

(2) The "HKU POP Site" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) and the "PopCon" website (http://popcon.hk) will tomorrow upload a column article entitled "The New World of Public Opinion" (in Chinese only for the time being) written by the Director of POP Robert Chung. The media is welcome to carry or report the article in full or in part any time, all copyrights open. The article is appended to the Chinese section of this press release.

POP interviewed 1,001 Hong Kong people between 18 and 24 May 2012 by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. Our latest survey shows that the latest support rating of CE Donald Tsang is 43.1 marks, pretty much the same as that of last survey. However, his approval rate now drops to 18%, disapproval rate increases to 74%, giving a net popularity of negative 56 percentage points. These are the poorest figures since he became CE. As for CE-elect CY Leung, his latest support rating is 54.3 marks, approval rate drops to 46%, disapproval rate rises to 41%, meaning that his net popularity has significantly narrowed to positive 5 percentage points, probably due to his recent public comments, which also indicates that his popularity base is far from stable. As for the SAR Government, its popularity has not changed much compared to one month ago. Its satisfaction rate now stands at 20% while dissatisfaction rate at 47%, giving a net satisfaction rate of negative 27 percentage points. Indepth analysis shows that the support of CY Leung as CE increases by age. The maximum sampling error of all percentage figures is between +/-3 and +/-4 percentage points at 95% confidence level, while the sampling error of rating figures needs another calculation. The response rate of the survey is 67%.

POP today releases on schedule via the "POP SITE" the latest popularity figures of CE Donald Tsang, CE-elect CY Leung and the HKSAR Government. 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.

[6] Errors are calculated at 95% confidence level using full sample size. "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. Questions using only sub-samples would have bigger sampling error. Sampling errors of ratings are calculated according to the distribution of the scores collected.

Recent popularity figures of CE Donald Tsang, CE-elect CY Leung and people's satisfaction of the overall performance of the HKSAR Government are summarized as follows:

[7] All error figures in the table are calculated at 95% confidence level. "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 rating not more than +/-1.4, sampling error of percentages not more than +/-4% at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures. The error margin of previous survey can be found at the POP Site.
[8] Collapsed from a 5-point scale. The mean value is calculated by quantifying all individual responses into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 marks according to their degree of positive level, where 1 is the lowest and 5 the highest, and then calculate the sample mean. Starting from March 2011, this question only uses sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sample size for this series is 539.
[9] Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level, meaning that they are statistically significant prima facie. However, whether numerical differences are statistically significant or not is not the same as whether they are practically useful or meaningful.

The latest survey showed that, CE Donald Tsang scored 43.1 marks, 18% supported him as the Chief Executive, his net approval rate is negative 56 percentage points. CE-elect Leung Chun-ying scored 54.3 marks, and 46% supported him as CE, his net approval rate is positive 5 percentage points. Regarding people's appraisal of the overall performance of the HKSAR Government, the latest figures revealed that 20% were satisfied, whereas 47% were dissatisfied. The mean score is 2.6, meaning in between "half-half" and "quite dissatisfied".

In the survey, we also asked respondents for their age. If they were reluctant to give their exact age, they could give us a range. Herewith further analysis of the support rate of Leung Chun-ying as Chief Executive by respondents' age:

[10] Differences among sub-groups are tested to be statistically significant at 95% confidence level.

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 let readers 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 each day starting from July 24, a record of significant events of that day, according to the research method designed by POP. These daily entries would be uploaded to "Opinion Daily" as soon as they are verified by POP.

For the polling items covered in this press release, the previous survey of some items was conducted from 17 to 23 April, 2012 while this survey was conducted from 18 to 24 May, 2012. During this period, 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.