Pongsapat clear leader in latest polls

Two major pollsters have found that Pheu Thai gubernatorial candidate Pongsapat Pongcharoen is leaving his Democrat rival further behind with approval ratings of 42 to 34 per cent.

Suan Dusit Pollster reports 42.59 per cent of its respondents said they would vote for Pongsapat while 34.31 per cent said they would choose Sukhumbhand while only 6.38 per cent said they supported Sereepisuth Temeeyaves and 0.77 per cent favoured Suharit Siamwalla.

The Abac Poll of Assumption University said 42 per cent of its respondents supported Pongsapat while 33.5 per cent favoured Sukhumbhand. Abac Poll found that 8.6 per cent of the respondents said they would vote for Sereepisuth.

The latest survey of Suan Dusit Pollster was carried out among 3,410 people in all 50 Bangkok districts between Saturday and Wednesday.

Abac Poll carried out the latest survey among 2,518 people from January 31 to Wednesday. Dr Noppadol Kannikar, the Abac Poll director, said his survey had the error rate of plus and minus 7 per cent.

Earlier, Suan Dusit Pollster found in a survey from January 26 to 30 that Pongsapat enjoyed an approval rating of 41 per cent while Sukhumbhand's popular rating was 36.12 per cent.

Abac Poll has conducted three surveys earlier - before the candidacy registration, on January 22 and 23 and on January 31 and February 1.

Abac Poll found that Pongsapat's approval rating was increasing from 32.1 per cent to 41.8 per cent and 43.1 per cent in the first second and third surveys respectively. It found Sukhumbhand's approval rating was 31.7 per cent, 37.6 per cent and 33.1 per cent in the first, second and third surveys respectively.

For the latest survey, Suan Dusit Pollster also asked its which campaign policies they like the most and found that 22.25 per cent of respondents selected the traffic policy of Ponsapat. The second most favoured policy was Pongsapat's antidrug trafficking policy with 22.01 per cent of respondents supporting it. The antiflooding policy of Sukhumbhand came third with 21.29 per cent of respondents supporting it.

But Suan Dusit Pollster also found that most (58.72 per cent) of its respondents thought Pongsapat's policy to tackle traffic congestion was the most difficult of the three to be implemented. That was followed by Sukhumbhand's antiflooding policy with 17.44 per cent of respondents citing it.

In the latest survey, Abac Poll found that 63.5 per cent of the respondents said they would go to polling stations while 36.5 per cent said they would not exercise their right.