TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A new poll indicates that the upcoming Taipei mayoral election could see fierce competition with votes split up among three candidates.
The poll suggests 28.3% of adults favor legislator Wayne Chiang (蔣萬安) of the Kuomintang (KMT), 26.4% for former health minister Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and 24.4% for Taipei Deputy Mayor Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊), who would run as an independent candidate.
The poll was released Saturday (Aug. 13) by DailyView, an online data analysis company. The result suggests a less than 4% margin of support among the three hopefuls.
Notably, only 54.6% of those who voted for KMT’s candidate, Ting Shou-chung (丁守中), in the last mayoral race remain committed to supporting Chiang, with 25.4% leaning towards Huang. Meanwhile, about 21.4% who voted for incumbent mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) have shifted their support to Chiang.
The poll, conducted between July 20 and Aug. 2, received 1,106 valid samples. It has a 95% confidence level and a margin of error of 2.95%.
Huang has yet to announce her bid when the local elections are less than four months away. She is widely expected to join the fray but has yet to make the move as she is covering work left by another deputy mayor, who suffered a stroke recently.
Huang on Friday (Aug. 12) hinted she will not resign to prepare for the election until after Aug. 27, when the Taipei Expo, which she oversees, is scheduled to kick off, wrote China Times.