With 30 days left until South Korea elects its next president, a poll by the Hankyoreh found Democratic Party presidential nominee Lee Jae-myung and People Power Party candidate Yoon Suk-yeol locked in a tight match within the margin of error — though the gap between the two nominees’ ratings widened compared to that in a Hankyoreh poll conducted 100 days out from the election.
According to a survey conducted by polling company Kstat Research commissioned by the Hankyoreh, in which 1,000 voters across the country were asked to rate the suitability of presidential candidates from Thursday to Friday, results showed Lee polling at 32.6% and Yoon at 38.8%.
The minor opposition People’s Party nominee Ahn Cheol-soo and minor progressive Justice Party nominee Sim Sang-jung trailed the frontrunners at 10.8% and 2.9%, respectively. The survey had a confidence level of 95% and a sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Compared to the results of a poll commissioned by the Hankyoreh 100 days before election day on Nov. 29 of last year, in which Lee polled at 34.4% and Yoon at 36.1%, support for Lee fell by 1.8 percentage points while support for Yoon rose by 2.7 percentage points. Accordingly, the gap between the two nominees’ ratings widened from 1.7 percentage points to 6.2 percentage points.
Support for Lee remained at a standstill or dropped in some of the key battlefields of the upcoming presidential election, such as Seoul, the southwestern Honam region, and the areas of Busan, Ulsan, and South Gyeongsang Province.
Notably, Lee’s rating dropped by 8.8 percentage points from 62.2% in November to 53.4% in Gwangju and the Jeolla region — the bedrock of support for the Democratic Party. In Busan, Ulsan, and South Gyeongsang Province, Lee’s rating fell by 3.8 percentage points from 30.2% to 26.4%. The only places Lee saw an uptick in ratings were Daejeon, North and South Chungcheong provinces, and Sejong, where his support increased from 37.2% to 40.5%, and Gangwon and Jeju, where his poll numbers jumped from 22% to 37.2%.
When asked, “Who do you think will win the election regardless of who you support?” 45.1% of respondents chose Yoon as opposed to 35.3% who answered Lee, with Yoon in the lead beyond the margin of error. Even among undecided voters who responded that they did not support any candidate, Yoon was projected to have a higher chance of being elected, with 35.5% of undecided voters predicting Yoon’s victory as opposed to Lee’s (22.7%).
In terms of the reasoning behind their support for certain candidates, 47.7% of respondents said they wanted to vote for the opposition party in order to confer judgment upon the current administration, while 37.5% of respondents said they wanted to vote for the ruling party for a stable government administration.
Again, results showed the scales tipping in favor of those wanting to pass judgment of the current administration, with the gap between the ratio of the “judgment” faction and the ratio of the “stable administration” faction — 46.5% and 42.0% respectively in the November survey — widening by 5.7 percentage points.
■ Survey Methodology
Survey period: Feb. 3 - 4, 2022
Survey method: Phone interview survey using virtual mobile phone numbers
Response rate: 19.0%
Weighting method: Cells weighted according to region, sex, and age distribution (based on the demographic distribution found in the resident registration data announced by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety on October 2021)
Sampling error: Plus or minus 3.1 percentage points with a confidence level of 95%
Polling agency: Kstat Research
Commissioning body: The Hankyoreh
By Kim Mi-na, staff reporter
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]