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About 46 per cent of the 907 respondents polled last week backed lawmakers in voting down the government proposal on how to elect the chief executive in 2017 if it is based on Beijing's restrictive framework. Photo: Nora Tam

Almost half of Hongkongers want lawmakers to vote down Beijing's electoral reforms: SCMP poll

Slight rise in support for any government plan that toes Beijing's line is insufficient to sway pan-democrats into backing it, survey finds

Support for a pan-democratic threat to vote down electoral reforms tabled by the government in the legislature remained at just under half of the Hong Kong public, in a comparison of two polls commissioned by the more than four months apart.

About 46 per cent of the 907 respondents polled last week backed lawmakers in voting down the government proposal on how to elect the chief executive in 2017 if it is based on Beijing's restrictive framework.

In September, before Occupy Central began its civil disobedience campaign, 48 per cent wanted lawmakers to reject the reform package.

Researchers say the difference is statistically insignificant.

On Democratic Party lawmaker Albert Ho Chun-yan's plan to resign from the Legislative Council to trigger a de facto referendum on reform, over 55 per cent gave it the thumbs down.

The weight of public opinion in favour of a less-than-ideal version of universal suffrage is seen as the government's last hope of persuading pan-democrats to support its reform package.

But more than nine in 10 of 180 respondents who considered themselves "pan-democratic" said Legco should say no to the government.

"There is little incentive for pan-democratic lawmakers to switch sides" and back the proposal, said Dr Victor Zheng Wan-tai, a research fellow at Chinese University's Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, which ran the poll from Tuesday to Friday last week.

Zheng's team found 41.7 per cent wanted legislators to pass the reform package, while 12.7 per cent said they did not know or that it was "hard to say".

This survey had a sampling error of plus or minus 3.25 percentage points and a confidence level of 95 per cent.

The earlier poll was conducted by the University of Hong Kong's public opinion programme from September 4 to 11.

Some 39 per cent of the 1,008 respondents supported the legislature in approving the proposal.

Ho said the survey had shown "strong opposition" to the reform proposal and insisted his party's legislators would vote it down.

"The proposal requires a two-thirds majority to be approved. How can the government convince us to vote for the political reform when public opinion is still obviously divided?"

Zheng said the respondents who did not know or found it "hard to say" were generally older and had lower education levels.

"Generally speaking, it is easier for pro-establishment groups to mobilise these people to say yes to the government proposal."

Meanwhile, 43.3 per cent believed a recent debate on Hong Kong independence would make it harder to attain universal suffrage, as opposed to 26.6 per cent who said it would not.

In August, the National People's Congress Standing Committee ruled only two or three candidates who had clinched majority support from a nominating committee could contest the one-man, one-vote public ballot in 2017.

Pan-democrats said this would screen out their candidate and vowed to reject any proposal based on the framework.

Prospects for any such proposal to succeed dimmed early this month when the government began fresh public consultations that did not seem to hold out the possibility of concessions.

 

 

 

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Post-Occupy views on reform 'little changed'
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