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Updated Sunday, November 28, 2010 11:58 pm TWN, By Alan Fong, The China Post

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Pollsters wrong-footed by unexpected shooting

-- Results in the five municipality elections, especially in the northern cities, have shown the limitations of pollster predictions in modern politics where, quoting former UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson, “a week is a long time.”

Taiwan's regulations forbidding the release of polls within 10 days before an election limit the pollsters' accuracy as they cannot reflect the changes caused by last-minute events.

The most significant unexpected incident in this year municipality elections is the shooting of Sean Lien, son of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) Honorary Chairman Lien Chan and a senior campaign official of KMT's Taipei mayoral candidate Hau Lung-bin, by a gangster late Friday in Taipei County (to be upgraded to Xinbei City).

Hau defeated Su Tseng-chang from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) by a significant margin of over 160,000 votes, or over 11 percent of votes. Earlier polls by all major news outlets and the Exchange of Future Events, an electronic speculative “prediction markets,” expected a closed fight between the two with predicted vote difference within the margin of error.

Pollsters are more accurate in Xinbei election in which the KMT Eric Chu defeated the DPP Tsai Ing-wen by a 5.22 percent difference. Most polls predicted Chu to hold a 6-8 percent lead while the Liberty Times gave the election to Tsai with an around 3 percent edge over Chu. However, the widely expected effect of the shooting to energize the KMT base means that the outcome might have been different had it not happened.

The Taichung election proves to be another surprise. All major polls showed that the popular incumbent mayor Jason Hu of the KMT held a comfortable lead of between mid-teens and 6 percent over the DPP Su Jia-chyuan. Hu won yesterday only by 2.24 percent.

In comparison, the elections in the southern cities of Tainan and Kaohsiung are more predictable. The predictions by major polls of a 15-20 percent edge by the DPP William Lai over the KMT Kuo Tien-tsai are close to the final turnout of Lai 20.82 percent margin over Kuo.

Latest polls expected Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu to win with more votes than those won by her opponents KMT Huang Chao-shun and independent candidate Yang Chiu-hsing combined. Chen won with over 50 percent of votes.

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