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Lee's approval rating falls to 52.2 percent: Poll

Published: 20 Oct. 2025, 11:38 Updated: 20 Oct. 2025, 18:38

President Lee Jae Myung delivers a speech at an opening ceremony for the Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition 2025 held at Kintex in Goyang, Gyeonggi, on Oct. 20. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

President Lee Jae Myung's approval rating slipped back below 53 percent, a survey showed Monday, amid concerns over trade talks with the United States and a disruption of online government services following a fire at a state data center.

According to the survey by Realmeter commissioned by a local news outlet, 52.2 percent gave a positive assessment of Lee's job performance, down 1.3 percentage points from the previous poll, while the negative assessment edged up 1.6 percentage points to 44.9 percent.

Realmeter said the decline was driven by several factors, including concerns about tariff negotiations with the United States, the nationwide outage of online government services caused by the data center fire last month and Lee's appearance on a TV cooking show.

Public criticism of the government's response to employment scams and the confinement of Koreans in Cambodia also contributed to the negative sentiment, according to the pollster.

Lee's approval rating had rebounded for the first time in four weeks in the previous survey, conducted from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2, before falling again in the latest poll.

The survey was conducted on 2,518 adults from Monday to Friday last week and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, with a confidence rate of 95 percent.

In a separate survey conducted by the same pollster on 1,008 individuals aged 18 and over Thursday and Friday, the approval rating for the Democratic Party fell 0.7 percentage point to 46.5 percent.

Support for the People Power Party rose 0.8 percentage point to 36.7 percent.

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, with a confidence rate of 95 percent.

Yonhap