CUHK
News Centre

A telephone survey was conducted from 20 to 26 September 2019[1] by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong to study the popularity of the HKSAR Government.  A total of 707 respondents aged 18 or above were successfully interviewed, with a response rate of 37.7%.  The sampling error is estimated at plus or minus 3.69 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Major findings are summarised as follows:

Satisfaction with the HKSAR Government.  According to the survey, 11.7% of the 707 respondents expressed satisfaction towards the HKSAR Government, 63.4% said they were dissatisfied, and 24.0% answered ‘in-between’.  The corresponding figures for August 2019 were 11.2%, 65.5%, and 22.8%, respectively.  The statistical analysis shows that the results for September 2019 were not significantly different from those of August 2019.  Nevertheless, when comparing the figures with that from the same month last year (i.e. September 2018), it was found that the percentage of satisfaction in September 2019 (11.7%) was substantially lower than that of September 2018 (30.0%).  The difference in percentage distribution between September 2019 and September 2018 was statistically significant.

Rating of Chief Executive Carrie Lam.  The survey in September 2019 indicated that the performance rating of Chief Executive Carrie Lam (with a point scale ranging from 0 to 100, 50 as the passing mark) stood at 28.2 on average, lower than the rating for August (28.4).  The statistical significance test (t-test) shows that the mean difference between the rating in September 2019 and the rating in August 2019 was not statistically significant.  When comparing her current rating (28.2) with that of September 2018 (53.9), the mean difference of the two months was statistically significant.

Ratings of Three Secretaries. The ratings of the Chief Secretary for Administration (Matthew Cheung), Financial Secretary (Paul Chan) and Secretary for Justice (Teresa Cheng) in September 2019 were 32.1, 28.7 and 19.4 respectively.  The corresponding figures in August 2019 were 32.9, 29.8 and 20.3.  The comparison of the ratings of the three Secretaries between September 2019 and August 2019 shows that statistically significant differences were not found.  When their ratings in September 2019 were compared with the respective figures in September 2018, statistically significant differences were found for all of the three Secretaries.

Trust in the HKSAR Government.  As of September 2019, 17.0% of the respondents showed trust in the HKSAR Government and 53.2% expressed distrust; 28.3% answered ‘in-between’.  The results in August 2019 were 17.7%, 54.6%, and 25.6%, respectively.  There was no statistically significant difference in trust in the HKSAR Government between September 2019 and August 2019.  However, when comparing the figure in the current survey with those of September 2018, it shows that the percentage of trust in the HKSAR Government in September 2019 (17.0%) was substantially lower than that of September 2018 (30.6%), and statistically significant difference was found between these two months.

Trust in the Central Government.  Regarding the level of trust in the Central Government in September 2019, 14.5% said they trusted it, 58.0% answered the opposite, and 23.8% said ‘in-between’.  The respective figures from August were 15.1%, 57.5%, and 21.7%.  No statistically significant difference was found between September 2019 and August 2019.  But the difference between the percentages in September 2019 (Trust: 14.5%; Distrust: 58.0%) and the percentages in September 2018 (Trust: 21.4%; Distrust: 37.3%) was found to be statistically significant.