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President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol speaks at a press conference on March 20 regarding moving the presidential office to Yongsan. (pool photo)

The percentage of South Koreans who believe that President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol will do a good job governing after taking office has fallen below 50%, survey results show.

At the request of Media Herald, the polling organization Realmeter conducted a survey on predictions of Yoon’s performance as president. The results showed just 49.2% of respondents predicting that Yoon will do a “good job at governance.”

The survey had a 95% confidence level and a margin of error plus or minus 2 percentage points.

The rate of respondents predicting a positive outcome was down by 3.5 percentage points from 52.7% in another survey last week — putting it on par with the 48.56% voting rate that Yoon drew in the election.

Another survey last week, which took place shortly after the election, had 52.7% of respondents making positive predictions for Yoon’s performance as president. This was significantly lower than rates that previous presidents-elect had recorded at a similar time after their election — including 79.3% for Lee Myung-bak, 64.4% for Park Geun-hye and 74.8% for Moon Jae-in.

After narrowly clearing the 50% line immediately after the election, Yoon’s already low support rating sank even further over the following week.

Another 45.6% of respondents predicted that Yoon would do a “poor job.” The rates of respondents making positive and negative predictions were roughly equivalent within the margin of error.

Current President Moon Jae-in’s performance was assessed positively by 42.7% of respondents. This represented an increase of 4.6 percentage points after his approval rating dipped to 38.1% shortly after this month’s election. Another 54.2% of respondents rated his performance negatively, down by 4.6 percentage points from the previous survey.

The Democratic Party drew the highest party support rate at 41.3%, followed by the People Power Party at 40.7%. The Democratic Party’s support rate was up by 5.7 percentage points from the previous survey, while the People Power Party’s was down by 2.5 percentage points. The People’s Party and Justice Party had respective support rates of 6.6% and 2.9%.

More details are available at the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission website.

By Lee Wan, staff reporter

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