Time to stop using the NCCU status quo poll
The misleading but widely-cited survey from the university’s Election Study Center obscures the massive support for independence in Taiwan. Is it even ethical to cite?
Imagine if poor people were polled on why they drove beat up old cars. Imagine if that poll had several answers, which were “might want a better car if possible,” “want a better car as soon as possible,” “waiting on it” and “don’t want a better car.” Imagine if most people answered “waiting on it” and then, disregarding all other data, from that a scholar concluded that most poor people don’t want to drive a better car.
That poll, a relic from the waning days of authoritarian power (the poll begins in 1994, the year after the repeal of the national security law that was martial law redux), was conceived by academics ensconced in a university that had been the former political warfare school of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It has the magical power of chopping the Taiwanese electorate into various groups that appear to support the status quo, thus obscuring the massive support for independence in Taiwan even in those days.