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

PopCon users predict Barack Obama to win with 290 electoral votes

Up to this day, 7 different guessing games have been run by the "PopCon" e-platform on various topics including the Super DC Election, CE Election, CE Nomination, Taiwan Presidential Election, CE Primary Election and DC Election. The final 24-hour moving averages of all guesstimates were very similar to the real election results. This time, the final guesstimates for the "US Presidential Election 2012 Guessing Game" which ended at 2359 last night puts Barack Obama in the lead over Mitt Romney with 290 versus 248 electoral votes. The difference was 170 electoral votes at the beginning of the game, now narrowed down significantly to just 42 votes.

The "PopCon" e-platform (http://popcon.hk) hosted by the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong launched this game two weeks ago. Over 300 guesstimate submissions have been received, and the accumulated bonus Popcoins now stands at 39,615. The winners will be decided by comparing the guesstimates to the election results, and will be announced at "PopCon" e-platform in due course. To echo with the South Korea Presidential Election due to take place next month, the "PopCon" e-platform will launch another guessing game on this election soon.

POP conducted a double stage survey on the rating of Legislative Councillors in October, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. The survey shows that, in terms of familiarity, Chan Yuen-han who has rejoined Legco has replaced former Legco member Audrey Eu at the top of the list, while the rest of the list remains the same as that three months ago. In terms of absolute ratings, except that of Emily Lau which has slightly dropped by 0.1 marks, the ratings of all others who stayed have gone up. Those registered significant jumps in ratings beyond sampling error include Albert Chan, Leung Kwok-hung, Lee Cheuk-yan, Wong Yuk-man and Regina Ip, up by 4.5, 4.1, 3.9, 3.8 and 2.3 marks respectively. In terms of relative rankings, Chan Yuen-han ranks first. Lee Cheuk-yan goes up two positions to rank fourth. Alan Leong and Emily Lau both go down one position to rank fifth and sixth, while the relative rankings of all others remaining on the list have not changed. 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 60 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 +/-1.6 and +/-2.5 at 95% confidence level, while the response rate of the rating survey is 67%.

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 1,020 successful interviews, not 1,020 x 69.2% response rate, while that of the second stage rating survey is 1,027 successful interviews, not 1,027 x 66.6% 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 +/-2.5 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 2012 mid-year. 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 second half of October. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 legislators whom they knew best. As a result, Wong Yuk-man, Leung Kwok-hung, Albert Ho, Jasper Tsang and Emily Lau 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 late October, 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:

[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 various ratings not more than +/-2.5 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures. Numbers in square brackets { } indicates rankings. The error margin of previous survey can be found at the POP Site. Starting from 2011, these questions only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned, with variable sub-sample size for each question. In latest survey, the sub-sample size of the questions varies between 596 and 677, and its effect has already been reflected in the sampling errors.
[8] Ratings with recognition rates not reaching top 10 in either stage of survey are not available.
[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.
[10] In two decimal places, the rating of James To is 55.39 and that of Jasper Tsang is 55.36.
[11] In two decimal places, the rating of Alan Leong is 52.32 and that of Tam Yiu-chung is 52.26.
[12] Not a Legislative Councillor during the survey period.

The latest survey showed that Chan Yuen-han was the most popularly supported councillor attaining 56.9 marks. Jasper Tsang, Regina Ip, Lee Cheuk-yan and Alan Leong ranked the 2nd to 5th with 55.8, 54.2, 53.9 and 53.2 marks correspondingly. The 6th to 8th ranks went to Emily Lau, Albert Ho and Albert Chan who attained 50.9, 49.6 and 40.8 marks respectively. Wong Yuk-man and Leung Kwok-hung ranked the 9th to 10th, attaining 39.1 and 38.4 marks respectively. The mean score obtained by the top 5 councillors was 54.8 marks, while that for the top 10 was 49.3 marks. For this latest survey, James To and Tam Yiu-chung obtained support ratings of 57.1 and 49.6 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:

[13] "Average rating" is the average of all ratings obtained by Legislative Councillors over the past 12 months.
[14] "Overall ranking" is first determined by their number of times on top 10, and then their average ratings.
[15] Not a Legislative Councillor during the survey period.

The overall rankings in the past 12 months showed that 8 Legislative Councillors have been on the list for four times. They are Jasper Tsang in the top rank achieving an average rating of 56.6 marks, Regina Ip, Lee Cheuk-yan, Alan Leong, Emily Lau, Albert Ho, Leung Kwok-hung and Wong Yuk-man who ranked the 2nd to 8th and attained 56.3, 52.6, 52.3, 52.0, 50.7, 33.8 and 33.0 marks correspondingly. Audrey Eu has been on the list for three times and ranked the 9th, with 57.3 marks. Tam Yiu-chung and Albert Chan have been on the list for two times, attaining 52.0 marks and 38.5 marks respectively, ranking the 10th and 11th. Chan Yuen-han has been on the list for one time and ranked the 12th attaining 56.9 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 12 to 19 July, 2012 while this survey was conducted from 27 October to 3 November, 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, "The first survey of top 10 Legislative Councillors conducted after the new Legco comes into office shows that, in terms of familiarity, Chan Yuen-han who has rejoined Legco has replaced former Legco member Audrey Eu at the top of the list, while the rest of the list remains the same as that three months ago. In terms of absolute ratings, except that of Emily Lau which has slightly dropped by 0.1 marks, the ratings of all others who stayed have gone up. Those registered significant jumps in ratings beyond sampling error include Albert Chan, Leung Kwok-hung, Lee Cheuk-yan, Wong Yuk-man and Regina Ip, up by 4.5, 4.1, 3.9, 3.8 and 2.3 marks respectively. In terms of relative rankings, Chan Yuen-han ranks first. Lee Cheuk-yan goes up two positions to rank fourth. Alan Leong and Emily Lau both go down one position to rank fifth and sixth, while the relative rankings of all others remaining on the list have not changed. 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 60 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."

• November 13, 2012 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and Principal Officials