Only a half Moon- but still a blue wave

After a brief surge into the 60s President Moon’s approval rating has returned to around 50% as North Korea once again disappears from the headlines in South Korea.

With Gallup he is rated at 53% ‘doing well’ 39% ‘doing badly’. Real Metre has him at 49% approval, 46% disapproval. Research View has him at 49% doing well and 47% doing badly.

The party polling is as follows

Gallup: Democrats 41% Liberty Korea 15% Justice 11% Righteous Future 7%

Real Metre: Democrats 38% Liberty Korea 26%  Justice 8% Righteous Future 6%

Research View: Democrats 39% Liberty Korea 20% Justice 10% Righteous Future 9%

All of which looks at least comparable to the local election results earlier this year (Democrats 51% Liberty Korea 28% Justice Party 9% Rigteous Future 8% Other 3%).

Moon is reasonably popular compared to past Presidents at this point in their terms. His predecessor Park Gun-Hye polled in the low 40s at this point in her presidency and before her Lee Myung Bak polled in the high 30s.  

While the Presidential approval polling is ok for Moon and the party political polling very good for the Democrats the issue polling is less pretty.

According to Gallup the administration remains in positive territory with North Korea relations (58-32) foreign affairs (58-24) and welfare (56-31)

However, on all other issues more people think they are doing badly than well. Economy (23-59), Employment and Labour (26-55), Education (30-39) and Conduct of the bureaucracy (28-43) are all negative.  

I feel the perceptions of economic failure of the Moon administration needs some explaining. From a stats perspective a developed economy growing at around 2.5-3% a year with low inflation (around 2%) and low unemployment (3.7%) is a decent economic record. Governments of countries of similar levels of economic development to South Korea would put these stats front and centre of their political campaigns because they are very impressive. The trouble is these stats are slightly worse than the one’s Moon inherited. It would be perfectly reasonable for Moon to argue he inherited a strong economy and he has kept it going- except Moon loudly argued for nearly a decade that the Saenuri Party (now known as Liberty Korea) was holding back the economy and he could do better.  So far that hasn’t proven to be the case.

The Democrats remaining area of popularity is in the ongoing easing of tensions with North Korea. With Trump and North Korea not known to be stable actors however this is not entirely within their control. Moon will also know from his personal experience as President Roh Moo-Hyun’s chief of staff public opinion can quickly turn against rapprochement with North Korea when the public believes South Korea is footing the bill and not getting any progress.

However, this should be equally worrying for the other parties. They are polling terribly when the public disapproves of the government on a wide range of policies.

  

There was also some polling done by the National Unification Advisory Council on lots of North Korea stuff.

64% of South Koreans supported easing sanctions to aid the peace process.

It found 61% of South Koreans supported the plans to disarm the Joint Security Area.

They found most South Koreans thought infrastructure projects (34%) and economic co-operation (33%) were the most important ways for North and South to co-operatee.

19% of Koreans thought ‘reform and opening’ of the North was very likely to happen. 39% thought there was a slight chance it would happen.

Finally Real Meter did some polling for the Humane Society International on animal experiments asking if people supported their taxes going into research to find ways to replace animal experimentation. 85% of people agreed, 8% opposed. How useful polling about spending taxpayer’s money is when it doesn’t explain where that money will come from is an open question.