President Lee and His Ruling Party See Sharp Drop in Job Approval Polls to 33.8%
These are some really bad poll numbers for President Lee which may influence his decision on whether to deploy troops to the Middle East which would likely be unpopular in South Korea:
President Lee Jae Myung’s approval rating fell to the lowest level since he took office, marking the ninth consecutive week of decline, a poll showed Monday.
In the poll conducted on 2,515 adults from Monday to Friday by Realmeter and commissioned by the EKN newspaper, 33.8 percent positively assessed Lee’s handling of state affairs, down 3.6 percentage points from the previous week.
His disapproval rating rose 3.8 percentage points to 63.3 percent.
Realmeter attributed the decline in Lee’s approval rating to negative public sentiment over controversies surrounding his recent Cabinet reshuffle, the possible deployment of military assets to the Strait of Hormuz and uncertainty over real estate policies.
The pollster also cited a sharp drop in support among liberal voters and those in their 20s, with support from those aged 18 to 29 falling 10.2 percentage points.
Even more interesting is that the opposition party is now more popular than the rulling party:
n a separate poll conducted by the same pollster, support for the ruling Democratic Party fell 5.7 percentage points from a week earlier to 36.1 percent, while support for the main opposition People Power Party rose 4.5 percentage points to 42.1 percent.
Times have changed really fast in Korean politics.
Are we surprised? Anyone.. really? Time and time again, I think these polls are rigged (to a degree) but there’s instability even within the Minjoo party between the 김민석 faction and 정청래 faction which is causing some of this rift and ultimate impact on Lee. Apparently, even the far left libs in Korea have shown their dislike towards Lee.
Lee campaigned from the left… spouting all the self-destructive leftist social and economic nonsense.
But once elected, he moved toward technocratic/pragmatic center-left governance.
He has repeatedly emphasized pragmatism over ideology, including cross-party appointments, business-friendly signals, and a willingness to compromise on foreign, industrial, and security policy.
The ideological anti-Korean leftist/globalist/redistributionist wing of his coalition is discovering that he is less interested in ideological purity than they expected.
They want to see militarized labor unions, public ownership of big Korean companies, steal from the productive class to finance the lazy class, hate USFK and love North Korea, hate Japan, embrace noisy women/demanding queers/encroaching 3rd world immigrants, tax or regulate the economically successful, soft on crime (but only the leftist type), etc.
Instead, Lee is cooperating with America and Japan for security, working with the chaebols instead of looting them (memory chip = golden egg), working with the US on investment and trade, promoting capital markets and shareholder return, is focusing on economic/technical/national security issues that leftists like to sabotage… etc.
The left runs from anything that doesn’t keep them in power by keeping everyone poor.
CH, you’re right on target here.
I agree with Chickenhead as well. I have been surprised by Lee so far. I keep waiting for him to revert to the leftist leaders we are used to in South Korea and he has consistently remained pragmatic. The decision to deploy troops to the Middle East may be the biggest decision he faces in his presidency. It will be interesting to see how he handles this issue.