A survey by Lingnan University revealed that Donald Tsang has the majority support for his re-election as chief executive (CE).

The survey found that 67.9 percent of 861 respondents interviewed between February 2 and 4 said they would support Tsang's re-election, up from 60.4 percent in the previous survey conducted in December.

The proportion of respondents who were very supportive of Tsang had also gone up from 16.1 percent to 23.5 percent.

More than 70 percent of them said they would support Tsang if the upcoming election was only contested by Tsang and Civic Party legislator Alan Leong, up from 60.6 percent from the previous survey.

Only 12.4 percent said they would support Leong, similar to the previous survey, and 6.3 percent said they were undecided, down from 13.6 percent in December.

Majority of the respondents said Tsang's election manifesto was better than that of Leong.

More than 88 percent of the respondents said Tsang's manifesto in maintaining the relationship with the central government was better, and only 0.9 percent supported Leong in this regard.

More than 70 percent of the respondents supported Tsang's administration and leadership capabilities, while less than 5 percent supported Leong in these aspects.

Nearly 60 percent of them thought Tsang had a clear future direction for Hong Kong and 42.4 percent thought he was a sincere person.

Only 8.2 percent thought Leong had a clear future direction, and 14.4 percent thought he was a sincere person.

More than 45 percent of the respondents thought Tsang had fully understood public opinion.

The respondents thought that the future CE should tackle economic restructuring and the widening poverty gap first before improving education system.

Nearly 90 percent of them thought Tsang would be re-elected.

(China Daily February 7, 2007)