Polling round up

Moon Jae in's approval ratings have shown a miniscule drop across the board.

Gallup has him on 75% approval (literally ‘doing well) and 16%  saying he is doing badly as President. This is pretty much identical to every weeks figures in May.

48% of people who approve of Moon gave a reason related to the North Korean summits as their main reason for their approval (61% if you assume ‘foreign affairs’ refers to North Korea).    

Real Meter has him at 72% approval, 22% disapproval

Research View has him at 71%-25% approval

They also give a good hint as to why Moon Jae-in’s ratings have been largely unaffected by the cancellation of the US-North Korea summit (though it now looks like this will go ahead). 41% of respondents blame the US for the cancellation, 31% blame North Korea with just 13% respondents blaming South Korea.

Party scores

Gallup shows very stable polling figures. The Democratic party are on 53%, Liberty Korea on 11% and Righteous Future on 5%. Don’t know/ no preference is on 24%.

Real Meter shows a 5% fall for the Democratic party with most of the other parties receiving a small bump. That leaves Democrats on 51%, Liberty Korea on 21%, Justice Party on 6%, Rigteous Future on 6% and Democracy and Peace on 3%.

Research View has all the parties rising slightly at the expense of don’t know. The have the Democrats on 55%, Liberty Korean on 22%, Rigteous Future on 6%  Justice on 3%  on Democracy and Peace on 2%. 

By-election polling

There has also been another poll (by Real Meter for KBS news) in Songpa B. In the district which is traditionally a swing district the Democrat candidate Choi Chae-song is on 54%, Bae Hyun-jin of Liberty Korea is on 19% and Park Jong-jin of Righteous Future is on 11% . It shows very little change from polls taken in early May.

They’ve also down a poll in Nowon C which shows Kim Seong Hwan of the Democrats on 49%, Lee Chu-seok of the Righteous Future Party on 20% and Gang Yeon-jae of Liberty Korea on 8%.

Can't find any polling on the other 7 races. If I'm missing something let me know!

Peace summit

Real Meter shows 72% of South Korean approve of the ongoing summits, talks etc. between South Korea, North Korea and the USA.

Gallup say 49% of South Koreans think North Korea will keep their promises while 30% think they will break them. They last asked the question in the initial days after the first summit when South Koreans thought North Korea would keep their promises by 58-20.

They don’t ask the more interesting question which is what promises South Korean actually think the North Koreans have made.

Local election polling

Two governors races are quite interesting, both polls by Gallup.

In Jeju the Democrats are not winning- the incumbent governor Won Hee-ryong leads Democrat candidate Mun Dae-rim 41-35%. Won first won election as a member of the New Frontier Party but joined the Righteous party split though is running for election as an independent.

South Gyeongsang is usually the Liberty Korea party’s 2nd strongest province (after North Gyeongsang). However they look set to lose the governor’s race there. Democrat Kim Gyeong-soo leads Kim Tae-hu of Liberty Korea 47-28. The race hasn’t quite tracked national polls- the Democrat’s lead was only 6% in March but has gradually risen. Possibly this is because Kim Tae-hu is quite a controversial character who was unable to become Prime Minister when nominated by Lee Myung-bak because of his various financial scandals.

Research View has polling on local elections in Gyeongi-do (Greater Seoul but not including Seoul itself) which show the Democrats winning by a long way in every major race.

Other polling.

Moon Jae-in’s minimum wage rises continue to divide the public according to Real Meter. 46% oppose the changes and 40% approve of them. Moon Jae-in plans to raise the minimum wage 16% every year until 2020. 

While my Korean is hardly perfect and I may have missed something I’m not sure this question is a good gauge of Korean’s views of the minimum wage issue. It asks whether voters approve of the recent changes passed by the National Assembly. It doesn’t separate people who oppose the minimum wage rise for being too high from those who oppose it for being too low. Looking at the innards of the poll shows that both a majority of Liberty Korea supporters (who would be expected to oppose it for being too high) and a majority of Justice Party supporters (who would be expected to oppose it for being too low) disapprove of the changes. I’ll keep my eye out for better worded questions. 

Trump’s approval rating is up in South Korea to 32% according to Gallup with 51% disapproving. It was 24%-67% in March.

Real Meter’s polls were conducted from the 23^rd-25^th of May

Research View’s polls were conducted from the 26-27^th of May.

Gallup’s from 29^th-31^st of May.