Updated at 10.29pm: Chief-executive hopeful Alan Leong Kah-kit narrowed the gap with his rival, incumbent Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, in Hong Kong?s historic chief executive election debate on Thursday, according to an instant opinion poll co-commissioned by the South China Morning Post.
The performance ratings were 34 per cent for Mr Leong against Mr Tsang's 46 per cent in the Hong Kong University Public Opinion Programme survey, which covered 510 people. A further 20 per cent said they did not know or it was hard to say.
Those who would vote for Mr Leong if they had an opportunity reached 21 per cent, while Mr Tsang scored 65.5 per cent.
The support ratings had been 74 per cent for Mr Tsang against 14 per cent for and Mr Leong respectively in the university poll conducted over last weekend.
The 90-minute combative debate saw Mr Leong aggressively seize every opportunity to shower the chief executive with eloquent attacks over his lack of commitment in universal suffrage and other government policy blunders over the past decade.
Noticeably more restrained and sometimes frustrated, Mr Tsang adopted a defend-only mode most of the time; and hit back with bitter rhetoric over his rival?s approach to Beijing and his misunderstandings of public finance and other policies.
Both did not spend much time elaborating their visions and policy statements but traded sharp exchanges when fielding the 28 questions randomly picked from election committee members and ordinary people.
