Lee's approval rating rises for second straight week to 37.9%: Poll

President Lee Jae Myung’s approval rating rose last week for the second consecutive week to 37.9 percent, a pollster said on Monday.

In a poll surveying 1,508 adults nationwide from Sept. 21 to Wednesday, positive assessments of Lee’s job performance rose by 3.1 percentage points from the previous week, while negative assessments fell 3.3 percentage points to 60.1 percent, Realmeter said.

Lee’s approval rating fell for 10 weeks before turning upward in the previous poll, helped by his clarification of key political issues during a press conference on Sept. 18.

“His communication through the press conference and his overseas diplomacy at the United Nations General Assembly and the Korea-U.S. summit worked in his favor,” the pollster said, noting that the withdrawal of Kim Seung-won, the justice minister nominee, and the resignation offer of presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik were also seen as a demonstration of his commitment to personnel reform.

In a separate poll conducted on 1,005 adults last Tuesday and Wednesday, support for the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) surpassed that for the ruling Democratic Party (DP) for the first time in two weeks, with the PPP garnering 39.4 percent against the DP’s 38.7 percent.

Realmeter said that the PPP appeared to have rallied support by helping expose the government’s poor personnel vetting system following the withdrawal of two minister nominees.

The survey on the president had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level, and the one on political parties had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.

Both were commissioned by the EKN newspaper.

Yonhap