President Lee’s approval rating sinks to new low of 37.4%

President Lee Jae Myung's approval rating has slipped to a new low of 37.4 percent, marking the eighth consecutive week of decline, a poll showed Monday.

In the poll conducted on 2,510 adults from Monday to Friday by Realmeter and commissioned by the newspaper EKN, Lee's approval rating fell 1.5 percentage points from the previous week.

His disapproval rating rose 0.8 percentage points to 59.5 percent.

Realmeter attributed the decline to controversy over Lee's recent Cabinet reshuffle and the government's reversal of its plan to lower the basic deduction for owners of one home who do not live in it, with many rented out.

Lee's nomination of Rep. Kim Seung-won of the ruling Democratic Party (DP) as the new justice minister has drawn criticism from the main opposition party, which has argued that the nomination was intended to help drop criminal charges against the president.

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

In a separate poll conducted by the same pollster, support for the DP slipped 1.3 percentage points from a week earlier to 41.8 percent, while support for the main opposition People Power Party fell 0.1 percentage point to 37.6 percent.

The poll was conducted on 1,001 individuals aged 18 and older on Thursday and Friday, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.

Yonhap