Yoon Seok-youl's Approval Rating Reaches a New High since the Second Week of April at 51.4%

[경향신문]

On May 9, a poll showed that President-elect Yoon Seok-youl’s approval rating exceeded 50%.

The polling firm, Realmeter conducted a survey on May 2-4 and May 6, and according to the 4-day nationwide survey of 2,014 people ages 18 and older, President-elect Yoon’s approval rating recorded 51.4%, while 44.6% disapproved of his handling of state affairs. This was the first time that Yoon’s approval rating surpassed 50% in three weeks, since the second week of April (51.0%), and it was also the highest since shortly after he was elected the twentieth president in the second week of March (52.7%).

The daily approval rating on Yoon’s handling of state affairs was highest on May 4 at 53.7%, the highest since April 5, but it dropped 3.3% to 50.4% on May 6. The survey was not conducted on May 5, Children’s Day. On May 4, 42.3% of the respondents disapproved of Yoon, but such negative responses rose 3.6% to 45.9% on May 6. Various allegations in connection with cabinet nominees scheduled for confirmation hearings, such as justice minister nominee Han Dong-hoon, appear to have affected the latest survey.

This day was President Moon Jae-in’s last day in office, and on his last day, his approval rating recorded 41.4%, while 55.0% disapproved of his handling of state affairs. Compared with the survey conducted by the same firm a week ago, his approval rating fell 1.4%, while negative assessments increased 1.4%.

As for party support, 49.8% of the people supported the People Power Party, 12.1% more than those who supported the Democratic Party of Korea (37.7%). The Justice Party managed to gain the support of 3.2% of the respondents, while 1.9% said they supported another party, and 7.3% refrained from answering. Support for the People Power Party rose 2.3% from the previous week’s survey, while support dropped 2.7% for the Democratic Party. A survey of daily support showed that more than half of the people supported the People Power Party on May 4, the day after the bill stripping prosecutors of their investigative powers was passed in the National Assembly and promulgated in a cabinet meeting, while support for the Democratic Party dropped to 35.5% that same day.

The survey was conducted using an automatic response system with 97% of the calls made to cell phones and 3% to telephones. The confidence level was 95% with a ±2.2% margin of error. For more details, please refer to the Realmeter website or the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission website.