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OPPOSITION TICKET'S SUPPORT RATING SLIPS SLIGHTLY: KMT POLL

2003-12-13 13:53:23

    Taipei, Dec.13 (CNA) The support rating for the opposition "pan-blue alliance" presidential election ticket is still higher than that of the ruling party, although the margin has narrowed since last week, according to the results of the latest Kuomintang (KMT) poll released Saturday.

    The support rate for the opposition ticket of KMT Chairman Lien Chan and People First Party Chairman James Soong was 32.6 percent in the latest survey, while that for the ticket of President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu was 25.8 percent.

    The support rating for the Lien-Soong ticket was down 2.5 percentage points from that in a similar survey a week earlier, while the support rating for the Chen-Lu ticket was up 1.0 percentage points.

    The KMT commissioned a private opinion survey company to conduct the telephone survey from Dec. 9-11 on citizens aged over 20 residing on Taiwan proper or the outlying island of Penghu. A total of 1,078 valid samples were collected in the survey, which the pollsters say has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.05 percentage points.

    Huang Teh-fu, director of the KMT survey center, said that although the support rating for the Lien-Soong ticket slipped this week, this does not mean voters have switched there support to the Chen-Lu ticket, pointing out that the drop was due to an increase in the number of undecided voters in the wake of the recent controversy over the referendum issue.

    Huang said that following the DPP's formal nomination of Chen and Lu and the party's attempts at drumming up support for the ticket, their support rating only rose 1.0 percentage points, which he said indicates that Chen's active promotion of a "defensive referendum" has failed to galvanize the general public's support behind the ruling party's ticket.

    He noted that the Lien-Soong ticket has maintained a lead of 5-10 percentage points on average over the ruling party's ticket over the last couple of months.

    Huang also said that the DPP's poll results which have showed the Lien-Soong ticket only having a lead of 0.5 percentage points on average over the last two months are inaccurate. He said that if the DPP poll results were accurate, then statistically speaking, the Chen-Lu ticket should have led in at least a few of the surveys, adding that this indicates the DPP has attempted to swindle the media through its surveys.

(By Lilian Wu)

ENDITEM/Li