President Moon's Approval Rating at 56%... Up 14%p Over 5 Weeks [Gallup]

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kang Nahum] A public opinion poll revealed that President Moon Jae-in's approval rating for his administration reached the mid-50% range, marking the highest level this year once again.

Korea Gallup announced on the 6th that a survey conducted from March 31 to April 2 among 1,002 adults aged 18 and older showed that 56% of respondents gave a positive evaluation of President Moon's job performance. This is a 1 percentage point increase from the previous week. The approval rating has risen by 14 percentage points over the past five weeks. Conversely, the disapproval rating this week dropped by 3 percentage points to 36%.

This week's approval and disapproval ratings by age group are as follows: 18-29 years old (20s) 52% approval, 38% disapproval; 30s 66% approval, 26% disapproval; 40s 69% approval, 25% disapproval; 50s 54% approval, 41% disapproval; 60 and older 46% approval, 45% disapproval.

By political party support, 91% of the Democratic Party supporters positively evaluated the president's job performance, while 86% of the United Future Party supporters gave negative evaluations. Among the non-affiliated (no party) group, the difference between approval and disapproval rates was not significant, reversing from 40% approval and 47% disapproval last week to 45% approval and 38% disapproval this week. The combined approval and disapproval ratings for the non-affiliated group in March (weeks 1-4) were 31% approval and 52% disapproval.

When asked why they positively evaluated the president's job performance (564 respondents), the reasons were 'Response to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19)' (58%), 'Doing their best / working hard' (6%), 'Overall good performance' (5%), and 'Expansion of welfare' (3%). COVID-19 related responses have ranked first as the reason for positive evaluations for nine consecutive weeks, and their proportion has steadily increased (24% in the first week of February → 58% in the first week of April).

Among those who negatively evaluated the job performance (361 respondents), the reasons cited were 'Inadequate response to COVID-19' (33%), 'Lack of solutions to economic and livelihood issues' (21%), 'Overall insufficiency' (8%), 'Focus on North Korea relations / pro-North Korea tendencies' (4%), 'Excessive welfare,' 'Autocratic / unilateral / biased,' and 'Untrustworthy / unfavorable' (each 3%). COVID-19 related responses have also ranked first as the reason for negative evaluations for six consecutive weeks.

In the survey on proportional representation party voting intentions for the April 15 general election, the Future Korea Party ranked first with 23%. It was followed by the Together Citizens' Party at 21%, the Justice Party at 11%, the Open Democratic Party at 10%, and the People's Party at 5%. Other parties received less than 3%, and undecided voters accounted for 25%.

Gallup calculated the 'expected vote share' using statistical techniques by weighting the proportional representation voting intentions based on the average voter turnout by gender and age group from the 2016 general election and the 2018 local elections, and by estimating the distribution of undecided voters according to a multinomial classification model. The results showed Future Korea Party at 31%, Together Citizens' Party at 26%, Justice Party at 15%, Open Democratic Party at 12%, and People's Party at 8%.

This survey contacted 7,304 adult men and women nationwide aged 18 and older, with a final 1,002 respondents completing the survey, resulting in a 14% response rate. The sampling error is ±3.1 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. For more details, refer to the Central Election Survey Deliberation Commission website.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.