President Lee’s Approval Rating Drops for the First Time in 6-Weeks; Still Remains High at 57%
It will be interesting to see if the Iran War has any impact on Lee’s approval rating if oil prices rise sharply enough to where it impacts the Korean economy:
President Lee Jae Myung’s approval rating fell slightly from a week earlier last week, marking its first decline in six weeks, a survey showed Monday.
Lee’s approval rating stood at 57.1 percent, down 1.1 percentage points from the previous week, according to the survey by Realmeter, commissioned by a local business news outlet. Of those surveyed, 38.2 percent said they did not approve of Lee, up 1 percentage point over the cited period.
Realmeter partly attributed the drop in approval rating, which came despite positive financial and economic indicators, to recent social debates over the fairness of the government’s push to merge major cities and provinces and lowering the age for criminal punishment.
You can read more at the link.
The push to merge cities and provinces needs some thought.
When evaluating a structural reform, ask four questions:
What is the stated economic rationale?
What are the measurable efficiency gains?
What are the electoral consequences?
Would the reform still occur if electoral consequences were reversed?
A good case could be made this is a ploy to dilute the political and financial power of conservative provinces to benefits urban liberals.
Need to watch that.
Approval ratings in Korea historically can drop really fast all of a sudden. The economic effects of the Iran war is likely to create political chaos should the conflict drag.
These approval ratings are rigged.