On September 13, a poll showed that President Moon Jae-in maintained approval ratings in the 40% level for the tenth consecutive week after positive assessments of his handling of state affairs slightly climbed. Support for the People Power Party rose for the first time in five weeks, widening its lead against the Democratic Party of Korea.

According to a YTN survey conducted by the polling firm, Realmeter, on September 6-10 of 2,520 voters ages 18 and older nationwide, 42.7% had a positive assessment of President Moon’s handling of state affairs (24.1% very good, 18.6% fairly good), while 54.4% had negative views (14.3% fairly bad, 40.1% very bad), and 2.9% said they did not know or did not answer. Positive views on the president increased 1% from the previous week, and negative views dropped 0.1%.

A regional analysis showed that positive opinions increased in the Gwangju, Jeolla region (10.5%); the Busan, Ulsan and Gyeongsangnam-do region (8.5%); and the Daegu, Gyeongsangbuk-do region (6.4%), while negative views increased in Incheon, Gyeonggi (5.1%); Chungcheong region (2.8%); and Seoul (2.7%). According to the age of the respondents, the positive responses increased among people in their sixties (4.4%), thirties (3.8%), and forties (3%), while negative responses increased among people in their fifties (4.9%) and twenties (4.5%).

The respondents supported the political parties in the order of the People Power Party (37.1%), followed by the Democratic Party (32.6%), the People’s Party (7.4%), the Open Democratic Party (6.9%), and the Justice Party (3.5%). Support for the People Power Party increased 1.8% from the previous week, the first increase in five weeks. But 0.1% of the people turned away from the Democratic Party compared with the previous week. The gap between the two major parties was 4.5%, bigger than the margin of error.

The latest survey was conducted by interviews on wireless phones (10%) and with an ARS system on wireless phones (80%) and telephones (10%). Phone calls were made randomly after samples were collected using a random sample generator for both wireless (90%) and telephone (10%) numbers. The confidence level was 95% with a 2.0% margin of error. The response rate was 5.6%. For more details, please refer to the Realmeter website or the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission website.