Taiwanese favor Trump over Biden in U.S. presidential election: poll

Taipei, Oct. 17 (CNA) A recent survey of people in eight Asia Pacific countries and regions has found that only in Taiwan there is a preference for United States President Donald Trump rather than his challenger Joe Biden in the upcoming American presidential elections.

According to the poll published on Thursday by the United Kingdom-based market research firm YouGov, 42 percent of people in Taiwan favor Trump, 30 percent are backing Biden, and 28 percent have no opinion, ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

In contrast, people in Malaysia favor Biden over Trump 62-9 percent, and in Singapore by 66-12 percent, the survey showed.

Among the other countries in the survey, Biden also led Trump in the Philippines (47-24 percent), Thailand (59-14 percent), Australia (60-21 percent) and Indonesia (63-12 percent), the poll showed.

Apart from Taiwan, the highest level of support for Trump was in Hong Kong (36 percent), but even so, 42 percent of the respondents said they favored Biden of the Democratic Party, according to the poll.

On the question of who they thought was most likely to win the presidential election, however, 37 percent of the respondents in Hong Kong said Trump, and 25 percent picked Biden.

In Taiwan, most people (45 percent) see Trump as the winner, and 29 percent think Biden will defeat him, the poll found.

In the other six countries, the majority of people think Biden will win, according to the poll.

The survey found that people in Taiwan favor Trump because they think the U.S.' relations with Taiwan and the rest of region would advance under his administration (42-14 percent) and the U.S. economy would improve (41-16 percent).

However, they said that Biden would do a better job combating climate change (26-9 percent), tackling the COVID-19 pandemic (26-13 percent) and promoting peace in the world (28-15 percent), according to the poll.

The YouGov survey was conducted Sept. 24 to Oct. 5 and was based on sample groups ranging from 1,003-2,092 in each of the eight countries and regions.