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Assessment of President Moon Jae-in’s performance as president

President Moon Jae-in earned an approval rating of over 80% in the first survey on support for his governance since he took office.

Public opinion pollster Real Meter announced on May 22 that a survey of 2,256 voters nationwide (95% confidence level, ±1.9 percentage point margin of error) conducted on May 15-19, commissioned by the Christian Broadcasting System, showed Moon with an approval rating of 81.6% for performance of his duties as president so far. Moon received a negative rating from 10.1% of respondents, while 8.3% said they were “not sure.”

Real Meter explained that the approval rating for Moon’s performance was “higher than the 54.8% first week support rating for Park Geun-hye [in office 2013-16] and the 76% rating for Lee Myung-bak [2008-13] after they took office.”

By age group, Moon‘s approval rating was over 80% for respondents in their forties (88.7%), thirties (87.7%), and twenties (84.7%) and above 70% for those in their fifties (78.9%) and sixties (70.7%). By political identification, Moon had favorability ratings of 93.7% for progressives, 84.3% for moderates, and 61.5% for conservatives. Moon’s approval rating was highest in the Gwangju/Jeolla Province region at 94.5% and exceeded 70% in all other regions.

A survey of Moon‘s prospects for governance over his next five years in office rated them at 82.3%, or 7.5 percentage points higher than Real Meter’s survey for the second week of the month on May 10-12.

The Minjoo Party ranked first among parties for support at 53.3%, up 8.6% from the week before (May 10-12). Real Meter said the party’s support “has been rising for three weeks straight and broke its previous record of 50.4% in the fourth week of March.”

Support for the conservative Liberty Korea Party’s fell 0.6 percentage points to 12.4%, while the moderate People‘s Party polled down 1.1 percentage points at 7.7% and the conservative Bareun Party down 1.5 percentage points at 6.8%. The left-wing Justice Party dropped three percentage points from the week before to 6.6%, plunging from third in party support to fifth in the space of one week.

“It appears that many of its supporters have abandoned it for the Minjoo Party,” Real Meter said.

By Lee Seung-jun, staff reporter

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