Taiwan News
Date: 2016-08-31
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – For the first time since she took office last May, President Tsai Ing-wen was shown to have more detractors than supporters, according to an opinion poll released Wednesday, her 60th birthday.

Previous surveys revealed a fall in popularity for her premier, Lin Chuan, who was also sworn in on May 20, but the latest Taiwan Indicators Survey Research poll said that while 42.8 percent of respondents were satisfied with Tsai, 45 percent were not. The situation where the line representing the negative overtakes the positive on a survey graphic is known as a “death cross.”

As in similar recent surveys by other organizations, it was not so much the president’s popularity rating which fell, as the number of people dissatisfied which rose. Compared to a TISR poll conducted one month earlier, Tsai’s support had slipped by 5 percent, but the dissatisfaction rate rose by more than 10 percent.

When the pollsters asked whether the public trusted Tsai, the figures came out markedly different, with 53.4 percent trusting her while only 32.9 percent gave the opposite answer.     [FULL  STORY]