Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation
April 2022 Public Opinion Poll – English Excerpt
Released:
April 26, 2022
Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation (TPOF) today released the result of its
April 2022 nation-wide poll. This marks the 68th monthly survey conducted by theTPOF aimed at tracking the development and changes in Taiwan’s public opinion.
The full release in Chinese language is available on our official website
www.tpof.org.
How the Survey was ConductedThis survey was conducted on April 17-19, 2022, with a sample size of 1,071.
Adults 20 years of age and older residing in Taiwan were interviewed by telephoneusing live interviewers. Landline numbers were drawn through random digit dialing
system. The samples were demographically weighted to adjust for gender, age,education and the district of residency based on the latest statistics published by theMinistry of the Interior. Sampling error is around ±2.99 percentage points with 95%
level of confidence.

Main Findings:
1. How worried are Taiwanese people concerning the surging wave of COVID-19
cases in recent days due to the Omicron variant? The poll finds among Taiwaneseadults aged 20 years and older, 72.4% said they are worried, while 25.9% said
they are not. Compared to our past polls there has been a slight increase inconcern from January, but still not as much as the widespread fear that wasrecorded in our May 2021 poll, when a serious COVID-19 infection also occurred
but with the older, significantly more deadly Delta variant. However, with thenumber of confirmed cases rising rapidly in recent days, the number of serious
cases and death might rise eventually as well. It remains to be seen howTaiwanese public will react to such developments.

2. The poll finds among Taiwanese adults aged 20 years and older, 60.7% said they
are worried that the surging pandemic might impact their job or income, while
37.1% said they are not worried. Again, we see a slight drop comparing to ourMay 2021 poll when 65.3% surveyed then said they were worried amidst theDelta infection wave that hit Taiwan at the time.
3. Do Taiwanese people support a “Coexisting with the Coronavirus” policy
approach in dealing with the latest COVID pandemic wave? The poll finds among
Taiwanese adults aged 20 years and older, 45% said they are in favor but 46.3%
are against it. Overall, Taiwanese general public is still deeply divided on theissue, although the ruling government has more or less moved toward adopting
this approach amidst the latest infection wave.

4. How do Taiwanese people rate the performance of the government’s Central
Epidemic Command Center (CECC) headed by health minister Chen Shih-chung?
The poll finds on a scale of 0-100, 59% of those surveyed rated CECC a score ofabove 60, 18.7% rated a passing score of 60, while 17.7% rated failing scores. Themean score is 70.22. It therefore appears that the Taiwanese public currently still
have high assessments of Minister Chen’s pandemic fighting leadership, despite
the massive increase in cases in recent days.

5. We asked Taiwanese people to rate their views of world leaders in current events.
Among Taiwanese adults aged 20 years and older, we found that:a. A majority of 59.1% have favorable views of Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, those holding favorable views are a majority
across different sex, age, education attainment, partisan affiliation, andeven the Taiwan independence vs. unification divide.

b. A mass majority of 86.9% have unfavorable views of Russian
President Vladimir Putin, those holding unfavorable views are amajority across different sex, age, education attainment, partisan
affiliation, and even the Taiwan independence vs. unification divide.
c. A majority of 74.6% have unfavorable views of Chinese Communist
Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, those holding unfavorable views
are a majority across different sex, age, education attainment, partisan
affiliation, and even the Taiwan independence vs. unification divide.

6. Are Taiwanese people worried about China seizing the opportunity to invade
Taiwan after the occurrence of Russian-Ukraine war? The poll finds among
Taiwanese adults aged 20 years and older, 38.6% are worried while 50.6% are notworried. While a majority are still not worried, a comparison to our February pollshows a significant increase to those who are worried.

7. Do Taiwanese people believe the United States will send troops to defend Taiwan
in the case of a war with China? The poll finds among Taiwanese adults aged 20
years and older, a majority of 53.8% do not believe there will be a U.S. militaryintervention while only 36.3% said they do. This confirmed again our criticalfinding from March 2022 poll that the Russian-Ukraine war and the lack of adirect U.S. military intervention to help Ukraine has had a major impact on theTaiwanese public’s confidence in a U.S. military intervention and drove asignificant number toward non-confidence.

8. Concerning Taiwanese national identity, the poll finds among Taiwanese adults
aged 20 years and older, 80.1% said they see themselves as Taiwanese, 5.3% asChinese, 10.2% both Taiwanese and Chinese, and 4.4% said they do not know.

9. Concerning Taiwanese views on political future, we asked: “There are debates
regarding the future of Taiwan. Some people argue Taiwan should pursue
unification with the other side of the [Taiwan] Strait, while others argue Taiwan
should pursue its own independence. Do you support Taiwan independence, orunification with the other side?” The poll finds among Taiwanese adults aged 20years and older, 52.8% said they support Taiwan independence, 11% forunification, 22.5% for maintaining status quo. This is yet another data point tosupport the long-established observation that the majority of the Taiwanese public,
when offered the options, choose Taiwan independence as their desired future
political status above all other options.

10. On the Presidential job approval rating, the poll finds among Taiwanese adults
aged 20 years and older, a majority of 49.9% approved of the way Tsai Ing-wen ishandling her job as the President, while a minority of 35.5% expresseddisapproval.

11. On the performance of Premier Su Tseng-chang cabinet, the poll finds among
Taiwanese adults aged 20 years and older, 47.7% were satisfied of the way Su
cabinet is handling the government, while the other 41.1% were not satisfied.

12. On political party affiliation, the poll finds among Taiwanese adults aged 20 yearsand older, 30.3% said they support the ruling Democratic Progressive Party(DPP), 14.5% support the Kuomintang (KMT), 9.2% support the Taiwan People's
Party (TPP), 2.6% support the New Power Party (NPP), 2.8% support the Taiwan
State-building Party (TSP), and 38.6% respondents identified themselves asindependents. The ruling DPP saw a noticeable decline, which might be due toeither the rising COVID-19 cases, or the wanning effect from the Ukraine war, orto the vicious in-fighting within the DPP for nominations for the upcoming localelections later this year.