By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has a comfortable lead over Greater Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the race for the municipality’s mayorship, a public opinion poll released yesterday showed.
The survey was conducted by the Chinese-language Apple Daily and found that Lin had a support rate of 51.4 percent, while Hu, who is seeking re-election in November, had 33.9 percent and 14.7 percent of the respondents were undecided.
Lin’s leading margin of 17.5 percent was slightly down from the 19.9 percent margin he enjoyed in the newspaper’s previous survey in February, when he led the mayor by almost 20 percent — 53.6 percent to 33.7 percent.
The latest poll was conducted between Friday and Saturday last week, and collected 1,087 valid samples.
Many political analysts and DPP and KMT politicians see the mayoral race in Greater Taichung as the defining battleground of the upcoming seven-in-one elections, since whoever wins that constituency will probably also take the bragging rights as the overall victor in the polls, since the DPP has always dominated the nation’s south, while the KMT claims the north as its stronghold.
In related news, DPP Department of Organization director Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) confirmed yesterday that National Taiwan University journalism professor Peng Wen-cheng (彭文正) had declined the party’s offer to run as its candidate in either the Hsinchu County commissioner or the Hsinchu mayoral races.
Peng had been hesitant to enter politics after seeing what had become of Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), saying that Jiang was former a highly renowned politics professor, but now the target of widespread dissastisfaction with his performance, Cheng quoted Peng as saying.
The DPP is trying hard to recruit Hakka candidates in the predominantly Hakka constituencies of Taoyuan County, Hsinchu County, Hsinchu City and Miaoli County, which have traditionally been the party’s weak spots.
As of now, the DPP has nominated Legislator Wu Yi-chen (吳宜臻) in Miaoli and former government information office minister Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) in Taoyuan. Overall, the party has completed its mayoral and commissioner nominations in 15 of the 22 constituencies.
If the remaining candidates are not selected before DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) term ends on May 20, those aspirants’ selections will be overseen by the next chairman, Cheng Yun-pen added.