TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — Two polls taken at roughly the same time paint very different pictures of the trend lines in Taiwan’s presidential race.

The My-Formosa poll taken on August 11, 14, and 15 shows that over the past six weeks, in a three-way race, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Lai Ching-te (賴清德) remained stable at over 35%, Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) rose 4.6% to reach 21.9%, and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) slumped 6.9% to slightly fall behind Hou at 21.7%. Contrastingly, a Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation (TPOF) poll shows in the last month, Lai has rocketed up 7% to hit a new high at 43.7%, while Ko slipped 1.2% to settle at 26.6%, and Hou plunged 7.6% to hit 13.6%.

Both polls show Ko’s support dropping but by significantly different margins. Depending on which poll you trust, Hou is either dropping off a cliff or climbing his way out of a hole, and Lai is either stable or suddenly, voters are taking a real shine to him all of a sudden.

I think the My-Formosa poll is far more accurate, and I take TPOF polls with a grain of salt. On the numbers cited above from My-Formosa, I used a six-week time frame to more clearly illustrate the trends, but they conducted a poll in between those two polls, and it painted an intermediate picture between the two in line with a trend evolving.

TPOF polls tend to produce wildly gyrating numbers from poll to poll that make for dramatic headlines but are often at odds with the picture other polls are painting. TVBS also tends to be a similar outlier.

Maximizing press exposure

My-Formosa releases their data and their entire poll at one time, which is very helpful in doing one’s own analysis. TPOF, by contrast, releases their poll questions individually one at a time, with no data.

The reason TPOF does this is pretty obvious: maximize press exposure. By releasing each question day after day, they get far more headlines than they would otherwise.

By withholding the data, their chair Michael You (游盈隆) can release it selectively as part of his own analysis, further attracting press attention to himself and making himself out as a sage. We can not contradict him because he only tells us about the data collected that conforms to his own analysis.

TPOF does not even release the dates when the polling was conducted, which is a dodgy practice because there is no way to determine if the poll was taken before or after certain events that may have influenced public opinion. I guess it was before August 17, which is the date the first of this batch of polling questions was released, which presumably would put it roughly around the time of the latest My-Formosa poll. We should not have to guess, though.

To their credit, TPOF does frequently ask interesting questions that no other pollster does. But frustratingly, without the data, it is hard to use it for any interesting analysis. For the most part, I only use TPOF data for trend spotting alongside other polls, though I tend to weigh TPOF lower.

It is very puzzling why these two polls are so different in their results and the trends they imply. Unless other polls contradict the My-Formosa poll trends, I am going to rely more on their results for analysis because their last two polls showed a fairly smooth evolving situation and trendline.

There are also some external factors as to why I suspect the My-Formosa number paints a more accurate picture. For one thing, there hasn’t been anything on the news that would give Lai such a dramatic 7% boost.

His recent trip abroad went fairly well, but it was low-key and undramatic. At best, that would have given him a mild boost, but nothing that dramatic.

TPOF’s impact on the Hou campaign

Similarly, there has not been anything that would account for such a dramatic collapse in support for Hou. If anything, things have been improving somewhat for Hou.

His campaign manager King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) has finally stopped doing everything he can to undermine the campaign by hogging the spotlight and picking very public fights with people in his own party.

He has even gone out of his way to be low-key recently. As a result, Hou has been getting more press attention, and he has not done anything to turn any of it negative.

Hou is now going to get a pummelling from enemies inside the party because of TPOF’s 13.6% showing. Supporters of dropping Hou from the ticket, especially supporters of replacing him with Foxconn founder Terry Gou (郭台銘), are almost certainly going to make a big issue of it.

This poll result is a big gift to their cause because, in 2015, when then-KMT candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) dropped below 15% in the polls, the party dropped her from the ticket and replaced her with Eric Chu (朱立倫) as the party’s presidential candidate. Citing that precedent, they will almost certainly use this poll result to press their case.

Because poll results can create their own momentum and change the narrative in political coverage, this poll was a big boost for the Lai campaign, not a bad result for Ko, but a total disaster for Hou. When asked about it, KMT party chair Eric Chu asked the reporter “Do you believe it?” and went on to add, “I think Professor Michael You needs to check his problematic sampling data, it is best if this kind of poll is not made public.”

Other Hou supporters will go further, following a familiar playbook by accusing You of intentionally manipulating the results for political gain. They will remind everyone that You was once a deputy secretary in the DPP and a party member until 2019.

They do this regularly when the poll results are not what they want to hear, but go silent when they are.