Poll statistics regarding Taiwan's independence vs. unification

Another look at the Global Views survey of October 2009

For several weeks, I have owed my readers the second part of my analysis of the recent Global Views Magazine opinion poll. The poll asked the usual questions about the attitudes of Taiwanese towards "independence versus unification." I've finally gotten around to putting this analysis into a presentable format.

At the bottom of the poll is a description of the methods used [sic throughout]:

This survey was conducted by GVSRC from 6.20 p.m. to 10.00 p.m. from Oct. 14-16, 2009. It was conducted with random-digit-dial sampling and computer-assisted telephone interviewing methods. 1006 Taiwanese people who are 20 or older completed the interview. One can say with 95% confidence level that the theoretical margin of sampling error is ±3.1%. Gender, living areas, ages, educational level and other features of the interviewees have undergone weighting procedure and test of the sample's representativeness in the survey results. The funding of the survey came from the Global Views Monthly.

I wasn't sure if each person interviewed had gone through the whole set of questions, or only a portion of the questions. If each person had completed the entire questionnaire via telephone interview (which seemed to be the case), I wondered why there were some inconsistent outcomes within their own survey.

I don't want to blame the pollster for this or to suspect data manipulation right away because sometimes people are tired of answering the questions at the end of a telephone interview, and they may provide inconsistent answers. However, from my experience, I can conclude that the survey gave inconsistent results -- assuming there was no data and/or sampling manipulation at all such as removing samples which gave unfavorable results or including additional samples (from the original randomly selected samples) which gave favorable results.

The abbreviations used here will be the same as those in my earlier analysis:

SD: Maintain the status-quo now, decide later
SF: Maintain the status-quo forever
SI: Maintain the status-quo now, declare independence later
SU: Maintain the status-quo now, proceed with unification later
II: Independence immediately (or as soon as possible)
UI: Unification immediately (or as soon as possible)
NA: No answer or don't know
TT: Total percentage who responded

The time when the poll was taken will be denoted with MM/YYYY

M: Mainland [sic] Affairs Council (MAC) statistics
G: Global Views Magazine statistics
AV: Average statistics for the year-to-date

The percentage sign is omitted throughout.

	2007	2008	2009-AV-M	09/2009-M	10/2009-G
SD	39.90	38.750	35.20	35.4	40.7
SF	19.25	23.350	27.50	28.0	11.0
SI	14.15	15.875	15.00	14.9	10.3
SU	10.70	8.050	8.15	8.7	4.3
II	8.80	8.850	5.85	5.0	19.0
UI	2.70	1.750	1.45	1.7	4.0
TT				93.7	89.3

Global Views Magazine conducted an earlier poll in May 2009 (refer to page 5 of the linked PDF file) which tells us:

SD = 44.9%, SF = 11.5%, SI + II (as in that survey it was not distinguished between the two) = 25.4%, and SU + UI = 8.3%, a total response rate of 90.1%.

The first thing I did was to add up the figures to reveal the total percentage of those who responded to find out the percentage who refused to respond or didn't know the answer. In the October 2009 Global Views survey, there was a total of 10.7% who either refused to answer or didn't know the answer, whereas the figure for the MAC survey was 6.3%. Generally speaking, a greater response rate gives more accurate poll results.

The next thing to do was to compare past trends with present figures. The SI of 10.3% is low compared to past trends as well as to the MAC result of 14.9% in September 2009, this coupled with the UI of 4% -- which is unusually high, as I mentioned in my previous post that this figure had never been as high before (only 3 out of 28 times had this figure ever exceeded 3%) -- made me suspect that maybe there was some attempt here to give an overall false impression (since most people will not compare the October 2009 survey with past trends) that people are shifting from the "status quo first then independent later" to the "unification immediately" group. But read on, and you will find out why this is not true when compared with the statistics of past MAC surveys.

The next task was to compare Global Views' results from the above chart with the different questions within the same Global Views poll.

The first question was whether one would agree (A) or disagree (D) with eventual unification with China, and here are the results (from page 3 of the link at the top of this post):

	02/2006	09/2008	05/2009	10/2009
A	28.7	19.5	16.2	15.7
D	54.5	67.5	69.0	69.0
TT	83.2	87.0	85.2	84.7

Notice that the people who want independence (SI + II) would answer "disagree" to this question while the people who would like to maintain the status quo forever (SF) would either answer "disagree" or would not give an answer to the above question. So, the percentage of "disagree" here contains (SI + II + some SF), and the "no answer" figure actually contains (NA + some remaining SF).

The second question in this survey asked whether one would agree or disagree with Taiwan's eventual (formal) independence. The results were as follows:

	02/2006	09/2008	05/2009	10/2009
A	44.3	50.6	48.5	47.2
D	40.3	34.1	35.0	34.1
TT	84.6	84.7	83.5	81.3

Notice that the people who want unification (SU + UI) would answer "disagree" to this question while the people who would like to maintain the status quo forever would answer either disagree or would simply not give an answer to this question. Therefore, the percentage of "disagree" here contains (SU + UI + some SF), and the "no answer" would contain (NA + some other SF).

Notice also that the total percentage of respondents to the second question dropped slightly -- from 84.7% to 81.3%. One explanation for this could be that some respondents thought that once they had provided their answer to the first question, it would not be necessary to provide their answer to the second question, viewing the answer to the second one as obvious or redundant once they had answered the first question. The immediate effect of this is that the second question got a higher non-response rate.

Since the same people (samples) had answered both questions plus the question contained in the chart at the very beginning, we can analyze further.

If we take the percentage who disagree with eventual unification (69%) minus the percentage who agree with the eventual independence (47.2%), it will give us the percentage of people who want SF (status quo forever) since the same people (samples) had answered both questions:

69 - 47.2 = 21.8%

i.e. (SI + II + some SF) – (SI + II) = some SF, and the remaining SF are hidden among the non-responses (NA)

The SF should therefore be greater than 21.8%.

On the other hand, if we take the percentage who disagree with eventual independence (34.1%) minus the percentage who agree with eventual unification (15.7%), it will also give us the percentage of people who want SF (status quo forever) for the same reason stated above:

34.1 – 15.7 = 18.4%

i.e. (SU + UI + some SF) – (SU + UI) = some SF, and the remaining SF are hidden in the non-responses (NA)

The SF should therefore be greater than 18.4%.

In either situation, the SF (those who wish to maintain the status quo forever) cannot be less than 18.4%, but the chart at the very beginning has the SF at 11%.

This shows us that the survey actually gives three widely-differing figures for SF: 11%, >21.8%, and >18.4%. It is quite inconsistent to have three different figures in one survey obtained from the same samples. Could it be because this figure was intentionally kept low by the Global Views pollster in order to give a higher percentage to the SD (thereby creating the false impression that many people want to keep the status quo now and decide later, including the option of unification), but in reality the 47.2% (assuming this percentage is not an underestimate) itself tells us that the SI + II = 10.3 + 19 = 29.3% from the first chart is an underestimate of people who want eventual independence. The rise from 29.3% (the chart at the very beginning) to 47.2% (the second question) is a difference of 17.9%, hidden in the SD.

The SU + UI = 4.3 + 4 = 8.3% from the first chart compared to the MAC result of 10.4% in September and the earlier trend suggests that there is a slight drop in the percentage of people supporting eventual unification (Could recent cross-strait exchanges have made some pan-blue supporters want to maintain the status quo forever?), but when given no such choice of maintaining the status quo, the percentage of people who want eventual unification rises from 8.3% to 15.7%, the difference in the rise is 7.4%, hidden in the SD.

Comparing the 17.9% (two paragraphs above) with that 7.4%, one can see that the increase in support for independence is more than twofold that of the increase in support for unification (hidden in the SD).

If we add the percentage of people who agree with eventual unification (15.7%) and the percentage who agree with eventual independence (47.2%), it is 62.9%, and if a person neither agrees with unification nor agrees with independence, the person must be SF or NA, meaning 37.1% (100 – 62.9 = 37.1) of the people who either want to maintain the status quo forever or who don't know or refuse to answer. Since the percentage of people who either don't know or refuse to answer does not usually exceed 15% (as a matter of fact, under normal circumstance and from past trend it ranges from about 7% to 12%), that leaves the percentage of people who want to maintain the status quo forever to be at minimum 22.1% (37.1% - 15% = 22.1%). Comparing this figure to the first chart of SF 11%, the figure of 11% is clearly an underestimate. This conservative figure of 22.1% can be compared with the MAC figure of 28% in September 2009 or with past trends ranging from 19.25% in 2007 but increasing yearly. This group (possibly wanting to avoid war with China) has the biggest percentage increase and the implication has been discussed in my previous post on this subject.

Finally, let's look at yet another question on the same survey (also from page 3 of the survey linked at the very top of this post). If the two sides [Taiwan and China] come to have similar conditions, 68.3% still deemed it unnecessary to unify with China while only 11.7% said it would be OK to be unified. And the total response rate for this question is only, 68.3 + 11.7 = 80%. It's interesting that the response rate nicely and coincidently adds up to the round figure of 80% and that the response rate is even lower than that of the second question above, which was 81.3%. This 68.3% figure may likely have suffered an underestimate because the response rate was limited to 80% when in reality the actual response rate was probably higher. How could anyone explain this 11.7% (yet another inconsistency) in light of the SU + UI = [only] 8.3% in the first chart?

To sum it up, there is no consistency in the figures in this survey.

The trend can only be observed when we compare the statistics over a number of years. There is no actual increase in the percentage of people who want eventual unification -- as a matter of fact, that number is dropping. And most people who answered that they wish to maintain the status quo now and decide later (SD) are actually people who want to choose independence later.

References:
* My previous post on Talk Taiwan: "Statistics on Taiwan's Independence or Unification opinion polls - Part 1"
* American Association for Public Opinion Research: "Do Response Rates Matter?"
* Oxford University Press' Public Opinion Quarterly: "A Comparison of Address-Based Sampling (ABS) Versus Random-Digit Dialing (RDD) for General Population Surveys"

(This post was edited by Tim Maddog.)

Ma Ying-jeou: Worst. President. Ever.

When pro-Ma media says so, it's even worse than that!


Rotten to the core
爛到極點
(Click to enlarge)
A survey released by pro-blue, 100% Chinese-funded TVBS says that Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) approval rating is now at 16 percent [212 kb Hanzi PDF file] following his inept and deadly response to Typhoon Morakot which began battering Taiwan on August 7, 2009, leaving a village with approximately 500 people buried in a gargantuan mudslide, thousands stranded -- some for over a week -- and tens of thousands inundated by deep flooding.


When TVBS says their own guy is doing this bad, he's doing much worse.
(Click to enlarge)
Ma took office less than 15 months ago promising "no unification, no independence, and no war" (不統、不獨、不武), but later said that the first of those actually meant that he "had not ruled out unification" [read: annexation]. Only about 10 percent Less than 9 percent of Taiwan's population support unification in any form whatsoever -- whether immediately or at some time in the future (1.2 percent wanting "'unification' ASAP," 7.6 percent wanting "status quo now, 'unification' later," for a total of 8.8 percent).

The Ma administration has also run roughshod over human rights. Last November (2008), over 7,000 police were ostensibly brought out to "protect" visiting Chinese envoy Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), but instead of merely doing that, hundreds of protesters -- most of whom were peaceful -- were brutally beaten.

That same month, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) (DPP) was detained on charges which have yet to be judged in a fair court according to the evidence. A judge (Chou Chan-chun [周占春]) who ruled that Chen could be released until such judgment was made was replaced with a different judge (Tsai Shou-hsun [蔡守訓]) who toed the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) line. Chen has now unjustly been in detention for over nine months. [If you haven't done so aleady, please go sign the petition to release Chen right now.]

Ma Ying-jeou doesn't care about Taiwan's Aboriginals
Remember in December 2007 when Ma told Aboriginals living in Taipei that he "sees [them] as humans" (我把你當人看)? [at the 7:25 mark in the video]. Then, when around 500 Aboriginals may have died in the mudslide which buried Siaolin Village (小林村), he blamed the victims for not evacuating. (Important point: The evacuation centers for that area were also buried by the mudslides.)

Where is the compassion? This cold-blooded administration has absolutely none. You must open your eyes, see clearly what's happening, and tell the world all about it. Above all, you must never forget how many Taiwanese have died (and continue to do so) because of the KMT.

FURTHER READING:
* While discussing Ma's actions during "the most crucial hours of Morakot," Taiwan Echo points out how everything Ma touches has ended up "a disaster." I recently dubbed this phenomenon "The 馬的斯 Touch®."

* Claudia Jean explains how the DPP tried long ago to do what the KMT is now trying to take credit for (and which the KMT repeatedly blocked, thus postponing vital action until hundreds of people were already dead).

* Michael Turton points out that "When [the pro-blue] UDN says a KMT administration is not popular -- it ain't popular."

* Over at Talk Taiwan, Άλισον wishes that Larry King would interview Ma Ying-jeou. On that show, a whole new audience would get to see Ma's incompetent and dangerous foolishness.

* Today's Taipei Times has an English-language analysis of the TVBS survey: MORAKOT: THE AFTERMATH: Ma, Liu approval ratings plummet in Morakot's wake

UPDATE: Here are some images showing the numbers from even more recent surveys.


A chart shows Ma Ying-jeou and Liu Chao-shiuan's (劉兆玄) "satisfaction" ratings.
Satisfied (L) vs. dissatisfied (R)
(Click to enlarge)

Here's a comparison of various surveys asking if Ma should step down (those below the black line).
Should step down (L) vs. shouldn't (R)
It should be noted that neither CNN nor ICRT could be considered "green."
(Click to enlarge)

Talking Show had a call-in survey about whether Ma should step down.
The final vote was: YES: 125,709 (98.214%); NO: 2,286 (1.786%)
(Click to enlarge)
[/update]

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Scapegoats: Taiwan, 台灣, Typhoon Morakot, 莫拉克颱風, August 8, 2009 floods, 八八水災, Taiwanese Aboriginals, 台灣原住民, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, TVBS, surveys, 民調

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Ma Ying-jeou's approval rating is down again

Stuck in a rut

A new survey released just yesterday which was conducted by the pro-blue Global Views Magazine puts President Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) approval rating at 28.6% [648 KB PDF file] -- down 5.9 percentage points from last month's 34.5% [316 KB PDF file].

Back at the Ma-World Theme Park, this might be considered a "bounce," since his approval rating in October 2008 was only 23.6% -- about the same as TVBS says [156 KB PDF file] Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) current approval rating is.

BTW, the Global Views survey listed above gives Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) (Ma's party) legislators an overall approval rating of only 19.9%.

Worst. Legislators. Evah.

Who's your daddy?
Keep in mind that all of the polls quoted above favor Ma and the KMT -- while book sales recently put Chen at #1:

When I photographed this in February 2009,
Chen Shui-bian's book "Taiwan's Cross" (台灣的十字架) was
in the number one spot at Eslite Bookstore (誠品書店),
beating Barack Obama's "Dreams from My Father."
(Click to enlarge)
Who's the failest [sic] of them all?
At a press conference today, Ma had this to say in response to a reporter's question about his "political achievements" behind the low approval rating he has just 10 months in office [transcription via SETN, translation mine]:

我們覺得大的方向都是正確的 但是溝通的工作應該更加強。

We believe that we're moving mostly in the right direction, but we need to work harder at communicating.

Ma seems to have been consulting his "magic mirror" again.

Expect even more mendacious propaganda.

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Nodes: Taiwan, 台灣, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, Chen Shui-bian, 陳水扁, surveys, 民調

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Ma Ying-jeou's spokesman distorts the truth

Even a pro-unification media* survey will back that up

Before I get to the distortion, let me start off with some info that's closer to the truth (and by that, I mean that the real numbers most likely favor an even greater degree of support for Taiwan independence). Here's a bit from a March 11, 2009 survey [236 KB PDF file] done by TVBS [translations, highlighting mine]:

台灣與大陸的關係：64%民眾傾向維持現狀，19%傾向獨立，僅5%傾向統一

Relations between Taiwan and the mainland: 64% of the public support maintaining the status quo, 19% support independence, and only 5% support unification

調查也發現，民眾對台灣與大陸的關係有１９％民眾傾向獨立，較陳雲林訪台前（９７年１０月２８日）的調查減少５個百分點（２４％：１９％），５％傾向統一，維持現狀的比例則由５８％增加６個百分點，為６４％。民眾比較希望兩岸關係維持現狀的比例，是近五年多以來最高的一次。進一步詢問民眾，如果只能從台灣獨立或是和大陸統一選擇一種時，６６％民眾表示希望台灣獨立，希望與大陸統一的比例為１７％，１８％沒有表示意見，與陳雲林訪台前調查結果差異不大。

The poll also found that on the subject of relations between Taiwan and the mainland [sic], 19% support Taiwan independence, 5 percentage points lower than a poll taken before [China's ARATS chairman] Chen Yunlin visited Taiwan (October 28, 2008), while 5% supported unification, and the earlier 58% support for maintaining the status quo increased by 6 percentage points to 64%. Over the past 5 years, this is the highest preference the public has shown for maintaining the status quo. Taking the question one step further, when the public could only choose from independence or unification, 66% of the public expressed a desire for Taiwan's independence, 17% desired unification with the mainland [sic], and 18% stated no opinion, differing only slightly from a poll taken before Chen Yunlin's visit.

One thing you'll notice if you read that carefully is that the answer varies greatly, depending upon how the question is asked. Furthermore, remembering that TVBS has a pro-unification position, one can easily deduce that if their numbers are inaccurate in either direction, they would want to tweak those numbers so as to favor unification.

Now, let's look at what Presidential Office spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said on the fourth anniversary of China's "anti-secession" law (which "legislates" the arbitrary use of "non-peaceful means" against Taiwan):

"We think the mainland authorities should carefully consider the feelings of Taiwanese and handle their piece of legislation appropriately," Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said.

Wang did not elaborate on what he meant by "appropriately," but said Taipei believed the "mainland authorities have the wisdom to know how to handle it appropriately."

Wang said President Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) position on the "Anti-Secession" Law has been consistent since it was enacted four years ago.

"He has insisted on protecting the sovereignty of the Republic of China and maintaining Taiwan's dignity," Wang said. "He has always believed the 'Anti-Secession' Law is unnecessary and unfeasible."

Wang said the legislation was unnecessary because the majority of Taiwanese were in favor of maintaining the "status quo" in the Taiwan Strait and are against Taiwanese independence.

Y'see? That's not exactly true. (Refer back to the information I highlighted in the TVBS survey.) If you ask Taiwanese to choose between independence and unification, a great majority will choose independence. Take the very real threat from China's 1,500 missiles out of the equation, and those numbers would favor independence even more. Change the word "unification" to the more accurate "annexation," and watch what happens. Taiwanese do not want their freedom to participate in the world to be oppressed by China for one more day -- much less indefinitely.

* Note TVBS' use of the word "mainland" (大陸).

UPDATE: As mentioned in the first comment below, Taiwan Echo has a post which makes for good complementary reading: Poll Shows Ma's China Approach Is Overwhelmingly Unsupported by the People. Go read it now, and spread the word. If Ma won't ask for public opinion, then it must at least be discussed in every home and on every street corner. [/update]

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Polygraphics: Taiwan, 台灣 Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, Wang Yu-chi, 王郁琦, Taiwan Independence, 台灣獨立, surveys, 民調, missiles, 飛彈

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

"Gallup Taiwan" isn't Gallup at all

First the background
On December 5, 2006, Feiren commented on a Kathrin Hille article in the Financial Times. In that post, he sought the truth by asking, "I have always heard that Gallup Taiwan is notoriously blue and in any event has had a very poor record of predicting elections. Anyone know more?"

In a comment replying to that question, I wrote:

The Gallup and Sutton bits look to be the kinds of things which the more they're said, the more they're supposed to become true. I truly hate that kind of "reporting" in the run-up to elections.

The FT has clearly made such "attempts to influence the future" before. If you look at the links beneath "Editor's Choice" at the upper right of that page, there's a link to an article from November 6 titled "Taiwanese pleas for president to quit may succeed"
(also with a Kathrin Hille byline) which contains this wishful pan-blue thought about the soon-to-fail third attempt to recall President Chen:
- - -
[T]his time it has a chance of succeeding.
- - -

Funny how that didn't even come close to happening.

Michael Turton then demonstrated similar powers of observation, saying "Feiren, I've also heard that Gallup is pro-Blue as well."

Truth to the fore: Johnny Neihu gives us the scoop
The Gallup Organization wasn't having any of that. They told the tale in yesterday's edition of Johnny Neihu's Mailbag:

Gallup vs Gallup Taiwan

Dear Johnny,

I just read your piece from last Saturday titled "You love farce? Send in the clowns." Toward the end you commented on Gallup and polling results from the recent election.

Gallup did not do this work. We are the only owner of the Gallup trademark in Taiwan and in 100 other countries around the world. We had a licensee in Taiwan who used the name up until 2002 when we revoked the rights. The poll that has used our name is a counterfeit. The individual [Dr. Timothy Ting Ting-yu, 丁庭宇] or his organization does not have any rights in the trademark Gallup and any unauthorized use is infringement of our registered rights. We respectfully request a correction.

Chris Stewart

Global Brand Manager

The Gallup Organization

Washington

Johnny replies: Interesting. And there was silly me blindly assuming that Gallup Taiwan was in all good faith a branch of The Gallup Organization. After looking at samples of the wisdom of Dr Tim, I notice that this pollster spends a lot of time barracking for political positions and telling Taiwanese what they should think about politics instead of measuring what Taiwanese think about politics. I've said before that sociologists are vulnerable to conflating cheerleading with science, but this former National Taiwan University faculty member takes the cake.

That's pretty funny coming on the heels of someone arriving at Taiwan Matters! via a Google search asking "why is all the foreigner blogger in asia dishonest" [sic]. The most dishonest ones in this area are the pro-China media, as recently demonstrated by both Taiwan Echo and myself. Open your eyes, and you will see.

More updates
I've added an overblown translation/explanation to Feiren's post of a YouTube video about the China Times this past Thursday. If you didn't quite understand the video, check out the update.

I also passed on a YouTube video to Wulingren of Frank Hsieh's (謝長廷) graceful concession speech after his showing in the December 9 mayoral election in Taipei. Keep an eye open for an update to his post.

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Piecharts: Taiwan, 台灣, elections, 選舉, Frank Hsieh, 謝長廷, media, 媒體, Kathrin Hille, 席佳琳, surveys, 民調, Timothy Ting, 丁庭宇, propaganda, 宣傳

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!