A recent survey showed that a majority of interviewees were not interested in politics and only 30% of the respondents read the political news every day.
Between the 18th and 27th of July, the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) conducted a telephone survey to gauge the public’s interest in politics.
Out of the 702 surveyees, the survey revealed that 55.5 percent of them were not very interested (39.9%) or not interested (15.6%) at all in politics. This correlates with another statistic, wherein only 42.9% of respondents answered that they seldom or almost never read political news.
Only 5.4% of the respondents were very interested, and 36.5% of them were “moderately interested” in politics. And 30.4% of the respondents read political news every day, 22.2% answered “several times a week”.
Most respondents also revealed that they never expressed political opinions to official channels. Across the board of options, nearly 87 percent of all respondents stated they had never expressed opinions directly to officials or relevant government departments.
Furthermore, 86.8% and 82.7% of the respondents had never expressed opinions through district councilors and legislative councilors, or non-governmental organizations respectively.
Conversely, social media was used comparatively more to express opinions. Up to 21.4 percent of respondents consistently shared messages on social media channels such as
Facebook and internet forums, while 51.3 percent of respondents never expressed their opinions on politics online.
Lastly, respondents were asked about their views on certain statements reflecting their reasons for political interest. Over 47% agreed that “government officials do not care much what people like me think”; and 43% of the respondents agreed that “people like me don’t have any say about government policies”.
Also, 38.4% of the respondents disagreed that “sometimes politics and government seem so complicated that a person like me cannot really understand what is going on”, with 57.1 percent either agreeing or half agreeing.