HKU POP releases Legislative Council election survey,popularity of officials, and PSI figuresBack

(1) The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong issued an erratum to revise CE Leung’s rating in early July from 54.0 to 53.8 marks. This does not affect his rating in mid-late July at all, and the picture remains that CE’s popularity goes up and then down in July. All media please take note.

(2) The “Super DC 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 Super DC election due to take place on September 9, until 00:00AM on the election day.

POP interviewed 1,002 Hong Kong people and close to 2,000 registered voters in between August 1 to 8, 2012 by means of random telephone surveys separately conducted by real interviewers. The survey shows that after the nomination period for this year’s Legislative Council election is over, 75% of all registered voters managed to tell us the exact month of the election, namely, September. This is much better than four years ago. However, only one-third are aware that they could also vote in the District Council (second) Functional Constituency, so-called “Super DC”, 56% are uncertain, reflecting a low awareness of the election. As for split-voting, only 15% of the voters said they are willing to adopt strategic voting, which is much lower than that registered four years ago. Regarding the popularity of officials, our latest survey shows that the popularity of CE Leung has not changed much compared to two weeks ago, but has significantly dropped compared to one month ago. His net popularity now stands at negative 8 percentage points. As for the Secretaries of Departments, compared to a month ago, the popularity of CS Carrie Lam has slightly dropped, with a net popularity of positive 48 percentage points. She is still the most popular Secretary of Department. The popularity of FS John Tsang has significantly increased, with a net approval rate of positive 41 percentage points. As for SJ Rimsky Yuen, his popularity has not changed much, with a net popularity of positive 15 percentage points. As for the Directors of Bureaux, excluding the newly appointed Secretary for Development Paul Chan, compared to one month ago, the net approval rate of 3 of the 11 Directors have gone up while 8 have gone down. Among them, Secretary for Education Eddie Ng, Secretary for Environment Wong Kam-sing, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Gregory So and Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok have registered changes in net approval rates beyond sampling error, down by 41, 15, 10 and 10 percentage points respectively. Among all the Directors, only Secretary for Development Paul Chan and Secretary for Education Eddie Ng register negative popularity, at negative 25 and 28 percentage points respectively. Secretary for Food and Health Ko Wing-man continues to be the most popular Director. According to POP’s standard, Ko Wing-man falls under the category of “ideal” performer, Matthew Cheung, Carrie Lam and John Tsang now fall under the category of “successful” performer. The performance of Lai Tung-kwok, Ceajer Chan, Anthony Cheung, CY Leung, Tsang Tak-sing, Eddie Ng and Paul Chan can be labeled as “mediocre”, that of Raymond Tam, Wong Kam-sing, Gregory So, Paul Tang and Rimsky Yuen can be labeled as “inconspicuous”. No one falls into the category of “depressing” nor “disastrous”. The maximum sampling error of all approval and disapproval rates is +/-4 percentage points at 95% confidence level, while the sampling error of rating figures and net approval rates needs another calculation. The response rate of the popularity survey of officials is 66%.

Legislative Council Election

Whenever there are large-scale elections, POP would conduct different surveys to track opinion changes. POP recently conducted a pre-election survey with the following contact information. All figures have been weighted according to the distribution of age, gender and geographic constituency of registered voters in the 2012 electoral roll provided by the Registration and Electoral Office.

[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.

Major findings are summarized below, together with parallel figures obtained in the last Legislative Council elections of 2004 and 2008:

[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 percentages not more than +/-3% at 95% confidence level” when quoting the above figures.
[8] 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.

One month before this year's election, 75% of the registered voters responded were aware of the coming Legislative Council election in September. With respect to whether they would follow split-vote instructions for strategic voting, 15% inclined to do so, which means a decrease of 5 percentage-points compared to the same time in 2008. On the other hand, 72% inclined not to do so, which means an increase of 8 percentage-points compared to the same time in 2008. As regards the new election of District Council (second) Functional Constituency (also known as “Super DC”), 34% of the respondents admitted that they are registered voters of this FC, 10% clearly understood that they are not, while 56% remained uncertain.

II. Popularity figures of CE CY Leung and principal officials

POP today releases the latest popularity figures of CE CY Leung and various Secretaries of Departments and Directors of Bureaux under the accountability system. All the 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 for the latest survey:

Recent popularity figures of CE CY Leung are summarized as follows:

Recent popularity figures of the three Secretaries of Departments under the accountability system are summarized below:

III. PSI analysis

The Public Sentiment Index (PSI) ^[20] compiled by POP aims at quantifying Hong Kong people’s sentiments, in order to explain and predict the likelihood of collective behaviour. PSI comprises 2 components: one being Government Appraisal (GA) Score and the other being Society Appraisal (SA) Score. GA refers to peoples’ appraisal of society’s governance while SA refers to peoples’ appraisal of the social environment. Both GA and SA scores are compiled from a variety of opinion survey figures. All PSI, GA and SA scores range between 0 to 200, with 100 meaning normal. Please refer to our online material for its methodology. Latest PSI, GA & SA figures in August, per poll, are tabulated as follow:

[20] Public Sentiment Index originates from the “now Survey on Public Sentiment Index" in 2011. It was then sponsored by “NOW News Channel”.

Figures show that the latest Public Sentiment Index (PSI) is 86.0, up 1.3 when compared to that of last survey. As for the Government Appraisal (GA) and Society Appraisal (SA), the scores are 90.0 and 90.8, up 1.0 and 0.9 respectively. As for the monthly change, the preliminary PSI is up 2.5 when compared to last month, the GA down 1.9, the SA is down 1.8 when compared to last month. In other words, there is a slight improvement in the public’s sentiment compared to the last survey.

Note: The following commentary was written by Director of POP Robert Chung.

After the nomination period for this year’s Legislative Council election is over, 75% of all registered voters managed to tell us the exact month of the election, namely, September. This is much better than four years ago. However, only one-third are aware that they could also vote in the District Council (second) Functional Constituency, so-called “Super DC”, 56% are uncertain, reflecting a low awareness of the election. As for split-voting, only 15% of the voters said they are willing to adopt strategic voting, which is much lower than that registered four years ago.

Regarding the popularity of officials, our latest survey shows that the popularity of CE Leung has not changed much compared to two weeks ago, but has significantly dropped compared to one month ago. His net popularity now stands at negative 8 percentage points. As for the Secretaries of Departments, compared to a month ago, the popularity of CS Carrie Lam has slightly dropped, with a net popularity of positive 48 percentage points. She is still the most popular Secretary of Department. The popularity of FS John Tsang has significantly increased, with a net approval rate of positive 41 percentage points. As for SJ Rimsky Yuen, his popularity has not changed much, with a net popularity of positive 15 percentage points.

As for the Directors of Bureaux, excluding the newly appointed Secretary for Development Paul Chan, compared to one month ago, the net approval rate of 3 of the 11 Directors have gone up while 8 have gone down. Among them, Secretary for Education Eddie Ng, Secretary for Environment Wong Kam-sing, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Gregory So and Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok have registered changes in net approval rates beyond sampling error, down by 41, 15, 10 and 10 percentage points respectively. Among all the Directors, only Secretary for Development Paul Chan and Secretary for Education Eddie Ng register negative popularity, at negative 25 and 28 percentage points respectively. Secretary for Food and Health Ko Wing-man continues to be the most popular Director.

According to POP’s standard, Ko Wing-man falls under the category of “ideal” performer, Matthew Cheung, Carrie Lam and John Tsang now fall under the category of “successful” performer. The performance of Lai Tung-kwok, Ceajer Chan, Anthony Cheung, CY Leung, Tsang Tak-sing, Eddie Ng and Paul Chan can be labeled as “mediocre”, that of Raymond Tam, Wong Kam-sing, Gregory So, Paul Tang and Rimsky Yuen can be labeled as “inconspicuous”. No one falls into the category of “depressing” nor “disastrous”.

The following table summarizes the grading of CE and the principal officials for readers' easy reference:

• August 21, 2012 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Freedom, social and legal indicators