Realmeter has come out with a new set of polls this week.
On party support the winner is…. none of the above.
The GNP, which took a ten-point hit in the wake of last month’s bye-election meltdown, has stabilized in the mid-twenties while the Democrats have remained stuck in the mid-tens. This supports what I have said earlier that last month’s elections were really a rejection of both leading parties.
This week’s poll also shows that the bounce the Democratic Labor Party got after the bye-elections has evaporated and they have settled back into single-digit support. No parties registered significant gains.
I suspect that the GNP numbers will tick back up to the low 30s over the summer while the DP will remain stuck in the teens. The likely increase in protest activity in June will slightly help the GNP with ‘law and order’ voters while doing nothing to help the Democrats.
BTW, I am a little surprised not to see more of an increase in support for the New Progressive Party after they picked up their first National Assembly seat.
Park Guen-hye is still far-and-away the leading candidate for president in 2012. Of course, if early polls counted for much we would be talking about the upcoming summit between presidents Goh Gun and Hilary Clinton.
In other polling news, MB’s ratings are still in the tank but he at least can be happy to know that his negatives have dropped a bit.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
What’s the basic story on the new progressive party people? Wikipedia says they split from the DLP after the DLP went more nationalist, so I assume they’re fairly far left but without the same kind of loony nationalism that infects most of the rest of the Korean left? Or are they a bunch of Nork apologists or something? I would really like to see something worth pestering my wife to vote for developing on the Korean left, but I’ve certainly never seen anything worth bothering about yet…
They are basically the “People’s Democracy” faction of the DLP. They are just as lefty as the “National Liberation” faction on economic and social issues but without the pro-Pyeongyang baggage that will always put a cap on how much support the DLP can get.
Alas, being the slightly silly party, they are having a hard time getting traction. If they can manage to get out of the gate and field a strong enough full set of candidates (a big if), I think they could compeat with the Democrats as the main party on the left everywhere except Honam.
They cooperated during the last bye-election and I expect that they will do so again this October and next year.
Here is a little more on the NPP/DLP split: http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/276262.html
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