Tag: approval rating

President Yoon’s strong stance against the doctor strike has the South Korean public beginning to rally around his administration with his approval rate now at 39%:

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s rising job approval ratings in recent weeks are bolstering the ruling People Power Party (PPP) and undermining the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea’s (DPK) strategy ahead of the upcoming general elections on April 10, which sought to exploit public dissatisfaction surrounding the president and his wife.

According to a Gallup Korea poll released on Friday, 39 percent of respondents positively assessed Yoon’s performance as the president, remaining flat from a week earlier.

In Gallup Korea polls, Yoon’s approval rating plummeted to 29 percent in the first week of February but climbed steadily to 39 percent by the end of that month. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

As low as Yoon’s approval ratings are at 37%, this is actually up from the 27% he was previously at just a month ago. However, his negative rating is 60% which is driven by economic concerns. The impact of the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S. continues to be an issue his critics have been hammering him on since he could not get any concessions from the Biden administration for Korean companies:

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s approval rating stands at 37.5 percent ahead of this week’s first anniversary of his inauguration, a Yonhap News Agency-Yonhap News TV joint survey showed Tuesday.

The survey also showed the ruling People Power Party (PPP) and the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) would win 32 percent and 30 percent of the vote, respectively, if next year’s parliamentary elections were to take place tomorrow.

Seven out of 10 people also said they are worried about South Korea’s security, the survey showed, amid a series of North Korean missile launches, and tensions with Russia over Ukraine and with China over the cross-strait issue.

According to the poll, the positive assessment of Yoon’s performance was 37.5 percent, while the negative assessment came to 60 percent. (……….)

Defense and diplomacy were the factors most cited by respondents in giving positive assessments of Yoon’s performance, followed by science, health care, culture and the economy, the poll showed.

In contrast, the economy was the factor most cited by respondents in giving negative assessments.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It is surprising how much of a jolt President Moon got from his summit with President Biden:

President Moon Jae-in’s job approval rating rebounded to above 40 percent for the first time in seven weeks thanks to positive reaction toward his recent summit deal with U.S. President Joe Biden, according to a new poll released Thursday.

In the survey conducted jointly by four polling agencies on 1,008 people over the age of 18 from Monday to Wednesday, Moon’s job approval rating stood at 42 percent.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

More bad news for President Moon:

President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating has tied its all-time low, while public disapproval of his job performance has surged to the highest point so far, a poll showed Monday.

In the four-day Realmeter survey conducted on 2,008 people, aged 18 or older, nationwide till last Thursday, 36.7 percent of respondents supported the president, down 2.8 percentage points from the previous week.

Moon’s rating had fallen to 36.7 percent, the lowest since he took office in May 2017, in the second week of December and bounced back to 39.5 percent the following week in Realmeter’s tracking polls.

The proportion of those who gave a negative assessment of Moon’s presidency rose 2 percentage points to a record high of 59.7 percent.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

President Moon and his Democrat Party keeps dropping in the approval ratings, but the Korean conservatives have yet to offer someone as their counter to him to capitalize on his unpopularity:

President Moon Jae-in’s job approval rating has fallen to a record low of 37.4 percent, a poll showed Thursday, with a rift between the justice minister and the top prosecutor deepening and housing prices in major areas continuing to rise.

Public approval for the ruling Democratic Party (DP) also dropped to 28.9 percent, the lowest since the launch of the Moon administration in May 2017, while that of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) rose to 31.2 percent, according to Realmeter.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

No matter how much more his numbers go down I don’t see President Moon replacing Choo Mi-ae because how well she has squashed every scandal against his administration:

The growing allegations surrounding Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae over her son’s military service are beginning to affect the approval ratings for President Moon Jae-in and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), as support for the President and the party has dropped significantly among men and the younger generation.

In a poll of 1,504 adults conducted by Realmeter from Monday to Wednesday, 45.7 percent of the respondents believed Moon was doing a good job, down 2.4 percentage points from a week before, while 49.5 percent disapproved of his job performance, an increase of 1.4 percentage points.

The decline was large among people in their 20s, whose support for Moon dropped by 5.7 percentage points; among men, by 9 percentage points; and among students, 10.7 percentage points.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the ruling party is trying to claim that Choo’s attempts for favorable treatment for her KATUSA son were just something any concerned parent would do. How many parents in Korea can call up the Defense Ministry and advocate for extended leaves, assignments in Seoul, and requests to be an interpreter at the Winter Olympics?

Despite President Moon’s overall great handling of the coronavirus pandemic that saw his popularity rise to 70% in April, his support has sharply dropped because of the growing scandals:

One of the things that has set President Moon Jae-in apart from his predecessors is that his popularity rating has enjoyed a stable level throughout his presidency since May 2017.

But latest surveys reflect a noticeable loss of public confidence in President Moon and his administration in the past few weeks due to some glaring policy missteps, including those related to real estate.

However, the increased disappointment is not with the missteps themselves but the “two-faced” attitude and discordance between words and actions by some of the President’s key aides and ranking government officials. The disappointment stems from the fact that the Moon administration was launched under the banner of “fairness and justice.”

This hypocrisy was highlighted by the recent controversy surrounding chief of staff Noh Young-min, who belatedly followed his own recommendation he had made late last year for senior presidential aides owning more than one home to sell off all properties other than their main residence. The recommendation came in response to rising public discontent toward the government’s failure to contain soaring housing prices.

When Cheong Wa Dae announced earlier this month that the chief of staff would sell one of his two homes, the public became even more angry because the decision to sell a less lucrative apartment in Cheongju, South Chungcheong Province, was seen as a move to retain a more valuable property in Seoul’s Seocho-gu. Yoon Seong-won, presidential secretary for land, infrastructure and transport, was criticized for a similar move, trying to keep a more expensive property in southern Seoul instead of a house in Sejong City, the nation’s as-yet underdeveloped administrative capital.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the article also mentions the Cho Kuk Scandal as another major factor of discontent that people remember. Not mentioned in the article are all the other scandals such as the Druking Scandal, the Comfort Women Scandal, the Real Estate Speculation Scandal, and various election interference scandals.

With that all said 44% for a Korean President is still not a horrible number and well above his all time low of 39% that occurred during the Cho Kuk Scandal. However, if the trend continues he could find himself back at 39% very soon.

It looks like South Korea’s ruling party is going to do very well in the upcoming parliamentary elections, especially when you consider all the underhanded tactics they have implemented as well to ensure they win:

The official pointed out that President Moon’s approval rating rose to its highest level in more than a year at 52.9 percent in a survey released by pollster Realmeter, April 2. The disapproval rating was 44 percent, down 0.1 percentage points from a week earlier.

The survey result came after the President announced a massive financial aid package for low-income households and small businesses as part of his government’s efforts to prop up the coronavirus-battered economy.

Realmeter noted that the self-employed and other small-business owners were behind the rise in Moon’s approval rating.

Some 49.6 percent of them, up from 44.8 percent in the previous poll, said Moon was doing a good job.

The DPK also had 43 percent support, while the UFP had 28.2 percent.

The gap between the two parties had narrowed to just a little more than 5 percent in late February, when the government fell short of taking preemptive measures against the spread of the coronavirus.

Korea Times

The Korean public clearly has short memories about how President Moon initially refused to stop travel from China which helped lead to a surge of coronavirus cases in South Korea. Blaming the Shincheonji church for the spread obviously worked to blunt the Chinese travel criticism. Since then I agree the pandemic has been managed very well.

Here is the latest of President Moon’s approval rating:

Realmeter polling company said Monday that 50.7 percent of the people it surveyed said they disapprove of Moon’s performance, up 1.6 percentage points from the previous week. The poll was conducted from Tuesday till Friday last week at the request of YTN. 

Moon’s approval rating was 46.1 percent in the fourth week of February, down by 1.3 percentage points from the third week of February, according to the poll. The gap between the approval rating and disapproval rating was 4.6 percentage points, which went up higher than the margin of error for the first time in four weeks. 

In Daegu and North Gyeongsang, where infections are skyrocketing day by day, Moon’s approval rating was 30.1 percent, while his disapproval rating was 65 percent. “The coronavirus outbreak will become the most critical factor in the politics in the coming weeks,” Realmeter said. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

The polling for President Moon just continues to get worse:

The approval rating for South Korean President Moon Jae-in hit a record low in a poll released just days after he issued a public apology for the resignation of a scandal-tainted minister who was a close political ally.

The support rate for Moon’s government was at 39%, according to data released Friday by Gallup Korea, which conducts regular tracking polls. The resignation of Cho Kuk — a former justice minister who resigned just five weeks after taking the job — added to Moon’s woes that include a tepid economy, a trade war with Japan, and North Korea snubbing his overtures for talks.

Bloomberg

You can read more at the link, but expect Moon to play to nationalism by promoting anti-Japanese sentiment and maybe even eventually anti-US sentiment depending on how cost sharing and North Korean denuclearization talks go.