Moon's Approval Rating Falls to 50% Range After 6 Weeks... Impact of Yoon Mi-hyang Controversy [Realmeter]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kang Nahum] President Moon Jae-in's approval rating for his administration has fallen into the 50% range for the first time in six weeks. It is analyzed that the controversy surrounding Democratic Party lawmaker Yoon Mee-hyang, who has been embroiled in allegations of accounting fraud at the Justice Memory Solidarity, influenced this decline.

According to Realmeter, which conducted a public opinion poll commissioned by tbs from the 25th to the 29th of last month, the positive evaluation of President Moon's administration dropped by 2.4 percentage points from the previous week's aggregate to 59.9%, the agency announced on the 1st. Negative evaluations rose by 2.7 percentage points to 35.3%. The gap between positive and negative evaluations narrowed to 24.6 percentage points, the smallest since the general election.

In particular, the positive rating sharply fell to 57.4% on the 29th, the day of Yoon's press conference, a significant drop of 4.9 percentage points. It appears that Yoon's explanations failed to convince her support base, leading to a decline in approval ratings.

By region, positive evaluations in Gwangju and Jeolla dropped 9.6 percentage points from the previous week to 75.9%. In Seoul, positive ratings also fell by 3.2 percentage points to 57.2%. By party support, positive evaluations among Minshengdang supporters decreased by 8.2 percentage points to 37.6%. Among Justice Party supporters, positive evaluations dropped by 6.7 percentage points to 77.4%. Conversely, positive evaluations among People's Party supporters rose by 7.5 percentage points to 42.4%.

Party support ratings showed the Democratic Party of Korea down 0.4 percentage points from the previous week to 42.1%, while the United Future Party rose 1.5 percentage points to 26.3%. The Open Democratic Party fell 0.6 percentage points to 5.6%, and the Justice Party declined 1.0 percentage point to 5.0%. Following these were the People's Party at 4.0% and Minshengdang at 2.2%.

This survey contacted 61,263 voters aged 18 and over nationwide, with a final 2,518 respondents completing the survey, resulting in a 4.1% response rate. The sampling error is ±2.0 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. For more details, refer to the Central Election Poll Deliberation Commission website.