Yoon Approval Rating Plummets... After Martial Law, Positive 13% · Negative 80% [PollPoll News]

President Yoon Suk-yeol's approval rating for his administration is plummeting. Party support for the People Power Party and the Democratic Party of Korea has widened significantly to a 10 percentage point gap, contrasting with the nearly tied figures from last week. Following the December 3 emergency martial law incident, both President Yoon's approval rating and support for the ruling party have sharply declined.

According to a public opinion poll released on the 6th by Gallup Korea (conducted from the 3rd to 5th nationwide among 1,001 people aged 18 and over via telephone interviewer method, with a margin of error of ±3.1 percentage points at a 95% confidence level, response rate 12.0%, with 1,001 responses completed out of 8,344 calls), President Yoon's approval rating was surveyed at 16%, down 3 percentage points from last week. Negative evaluations stating he is doing poorly reached 75%. This marks the lowest positive rating and highest negative rating since his inauguration.

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Gallup Korea unusually calculated President Yoon's job performance approval separately for responses collected on December 4 and 5, after the emergency martial law incident on December 3. Gallup explained that a clear difference in job performance evaluations before and after the incident warranted separate presentation. According to the poll results conducted in the same manner for December 4-5, positive evaluations of President Yoon dropped to 13%, while negative evaluations rose to 80%, indicating a more significant decline in approval.

Looking at respondent characteristics revealed by Gallup Korea, many evaluated President Yoon as currently "doing poorly." In particular, among Democratic Party supporters and respondents with progressive tendencies, negative evaluations exceeded 90%. Among People Power Party supporters, positive and negative views were nearly balanced at around 40% each. Among those who gave negative evaluations (749 people, open-ended responses), the main reasons cited were "economy/livelihood/prices" (19%) and "emergency martial law incident" (16%).

Before the emergency martial law incident on the 3rd, positive and negative ratings were 19% and 68%, respectively, but for the two days following the incident, these shifted to 13% and 80%. Gallup analyzed this change as resembling the pattern around former President Park Geun-hye's public apology during the early stages of the political scandal in the fourth week of October 2016. At that time, the weekly job approval rating was 17%, with 23% before the apology and 14% after.

When Gallup Korea asked an open-ended question, "Who do you think would be a good political leader to lead our country in the future, that is, a prospective presidential candidate?" the results were: Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party, 29%; Han Dong-hoon, leader of the People Power Party, 11%; Cho Guk, leader of the Cho Guk Innovation Party, 4%; and Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, Daegu Mayor Hong Jun-pyo, and Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Dong-yeon each receiving around 3%.

Lee Jae-myung has maintained the highest preference since last month. Among the 369 respondents who identified as Democratic Party supporters, 62% supported Lee. Among the 274 respondents who identified as People Power Party supporters, 37% supported Han.

For more details, please refer to the website of the Central Election Survey Deliberation Commission.

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