South Korea's conservative People Power Party saw its popularity rating fall below the 20 percent mark for the first time in nearly five years, amid intensifying special counsel probes into disgraced former President Yoon Suk Yeol.
The main opposition party's support ratings for the second week of July came to 19 percent, down by 3 percentage points from the previous week, according to a poll on 1,002 South Korean adults by Gallup Korea on Friday.
According to the pollster, Friday's figure was the lowest rating for the major conservative party since November 2020, while those who had no political party to support amounted to 27 percent of all respondents, up 4 percentage points compared with the previous week.
The ruling left-wing Democratic Party of Korea's rating reached 43 percent, down by 3 percentage points, leaving the 24 percentage point gap in popularity level unchanged from the previous week.
The support level for the ruling party was higher than that of the main opposition party across the nation, and the conservative strongholds in the southeastern regions were no exception. Especially in Daegu and the surrounding North Gyeongsang Province combined, the support rating for the People Power Party stood at 27 percent, lower than the 34 percent rating for the liberal ruling party.
Only 47 percent of conservatives expressed support for the People Power Party, the poll also showed.
The major right-wing party, which was rebranded as the People Power Party in September 2020, struggled to win public support in the first three years of the former liberal president Moon Jae-in's five-year tenure.
But starting April 2021, the gap in support level between major parties mostly amounted to low single digits, until Yoon's presidential election victory in March 2022, according to Gallup Korea.
Immediately after Yoon's botched martial law declaration in December, the People Power Party's support level plummeted. From January to May, its ratings hovered mostly in the mid-30 percent range until the early presidential election, which took place due to Yoon's impeachment in December and ouster from office in April.
The party's ratings have remained in the low 20 percent range since liberal President Lee Jae Myung's election victory in early June.
Yoon, who quit the People Power Party in May, has been under arrest on charges related to his short-lived martial law imposition. The court approved his arrest warrant Thursday morning after the special counsel looking into his insurrection allegations sought a warrant Sunday.
Another poll by the National Barometer Survey, jointly conducted by Embrain Public, KStat Research, Korea Research and Hankook Research, also indicated a similar downtrend in the People Power Party's popularity, with the rating standing at 19 percent on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Friday's Gallup Korea poll suggested that President Lee's job approval rating in the second week of July slipped 2 percentage points to 63 percent in a week.
consnow@heraldcorp.com
