A recent survey has found that 77% of Taiwanese are annoyed by the upcoming local elections:
As Taiwan’s political parties gear up for Saturday’s election, a recent survey has shown that 77 percent of local workers felt election-related events had impacted on their normal lives, 1111 Manpower Bank said yesterday.
In Taiwan, where various elections are held every year, some 58 percent of the respondents said that they were “not enthusiastic” or “not extremely unenthusiastic” about the widely reported upcoming election.
Now, one thing to remember is that Taipei City and Kaohsiung City aren’t having any elections this time around (they both elected their mayors a couple of years ago). Given that over 4 million of the 22+ million Taiwanese are resident in these two cities, only just over 80% of Taiwan is involved in any election. Now factor out the estimated 800,000 people who were involved in political rallies over the weekend, and what does that leave you? By my maths, 78% of people living in Taiwan are either not living in an election area, or participated in a rally last weekend. Or, to put it another way:
99% of non-rally attending voters are annoyed by this election.
OK. I am playing a bit fast and loose with the figures: It’s certainly possible to live in Taipei and be affected by the election that the rest of the country is having, the estimates for rallies are by the political parties (who are unlikely to underestimate attendance), and many of the rally attendees will also be from Taipei. However, I feel my methods are at least as scientific as your average opinion poll in Taiwan – after all this one claims:
The survey gathered 1,588 effective samples and was conducted over the Internet in the period November 16 to 29, with a confidence margin of 95 percent.
95% Confidence level in an internet survey? Taiwanese pollsters: the only people who make internet surveys seem scientific!
Incidentally, the title of this post comes from the claim by the survey that one third of people were suffering from “election-trauma syndrome”. I wonder whether this condition covers my impulse to start swearing at the TV as yet another advert for a politician from the other end of the country comes on?
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Forget the T.V.! At least you can turn that off. I’ve had trauma of the “loudspeaker” kind. My goodness!! There has not been one minute of the day in the last month where an election campaign loudspeaker hasn’t given noise pollution a whole new meaning. You would think these politicians would show a little more respect to the ones who actually vote for them, wouldn’t you? It’s insane!! What’s worse — I live next to a hospital!!! The Election board in Taiwan has got to put some limits on this obnoxious intrusion of air-space. I encourage every Taiwanese resident to call or email the Election board in Taiwan as we did and put an end to this madness. Enough is enough!!!!