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PPP support rises as partisan gap reverts to pre-martial law state, Gallup poll finds

Published: 17 Jan. 2025, 19:32 Updated: 17 Jan. 2025, 20:10

MICHAEL LEE
[email protected]

President Yoon Suk Yeol, right, greets Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung at the presidential office in Yongsan District, central Seoul, on April 29, 2024. [YONHAP]

Support for impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol's People Power Party (PPP) has risen to 39 percent, according to the results of a recent survey released by Gallup Korea on Friday.

The survey, which questioned 1,001 adults over the age of 18 from Tuesday to Thursday, showed a 5 percent increase in support of the PPP, which has resisted attempts by the liberal Democratic Party (DP) to establish a special counsel probe into Yoon’s Dec. 3 declaration of martial law.

The DP, which spearheaded an impeachment motion against Yoon that passed on Dec. 14, received support from 36 percent of respondents, which is the same as Gallup’s survey from the previous week.

The minor liberal Rebuilding Korea Party received support from 4 percent of respondents, while 17 percent reported no preference for any party.

In its analysis, Gallup Korea said that the country’s partisan divide appears to “have reverted to the state it was in before the Dec. 3 declaration of martial law.”

The pollster noted that the DP recorded its highest level of popular support since Yoon took office in the immediate aftermath of his impeachment, but that surge has receded in the new year.

Gallup Korea said it believes Yoon and the PPP managed to claw back and consolidate support from its conservative base “through repeated political messaging.”

Altogether, the pollster believes the current political situation is “clearly different” from the 2016 impeachment crisis, when then-President Park Geun-hye and her Saenuri Party bled support after she was suspended from office over allegations that she had allowed her confidant Choi Soon-sil to meddle in state affairs.

Though the Saenuri Party polled between 29 and 34 percent from April to October 2016, support for conservatives crashed after Park was impeached by the National Assembly in December that year.

Just 12 percent of the respondents to the Gallup survey in the third week of January 2017 expressed support for the Saenuri Party compared to 37 percent for the Democratic Party.

However, the recent Gallup survey found that DP leader Lee Jae-myung still leads among all current hypothetical contenders for the presidency.

If the Constitutional Court rules to uphold Yoon’s impeachment, a snap presidential election must be held within 60 days.

According to the survey, 31 percent of respondents said they prefer Lee as Korea’s next president over potential conservative candidates Labor Minister Kim Moon-soo, Daegu Mayor Hong Joon-pyo and former PPP leader Han Dong-hoon, who each received between 6 and 7 percent support.

Among the respondents who identified as DP supporters, 74 percent said they would vote for Lee as president, while 14 percent of PPP supporters said they prefer Kim.

Just 40 percent of respondents said they want to see conservatives stay in power, while 48 percent said they want a candidate from the liberal bloc to take over the reins of government.

Gallup also found support for Yoon’s impeachment fell from 70 percent among respondents between the ages of 20 and 40 to 60 percent, while those aged 60 and over shifted markedly in opposition to his removal from office.

BY MICHAEL LEE [[email protected]]