Public sentiment toward President Lee Jae-myung and the ruling Democratic Party is diverging. Two months ago the president's approval rating ran ahead of his party's support and the two moved in tandem. Recently, however, the president's approval has clearly fallen below the party's. Confusion over housing policy and controversy over vetting of nominees have weighed heavily on assessments of the president's handling of state affairs, and cracks are appearing in the early-term structure in which the party and the government moved as one. Some in the ruling bloc worry this could undermine the cohesion they have built around party-government alignment.
Lee and Democratic Party Ratings Flip in Two Months
Seoul Economic Daily analyzed recently released opinion polls on trends in support for the president and the ruling party on the 26th, and found the two indicators diverging sharply.
In Realmeter's third-week September survey released on the 21st, positive assessments of Lee's performance stood at 34.8%. That was up 1 percentage point from the previous week, the first rebound in 10 weeks, but negative assessments reached 63.4%. Democratic Party support, by contrast, stood at 40.2%, ahead of the People Power Party at 38.5%, widening the gap between the president's approval and his party's support to 5.4 percentage points. The reversal between the president and the party began in the second week of August, when Lee's approval was 43.3% against 44.6% support for the Democratic Party, and has held since.
The change is starker against figures from two months earlier. In Realmeter's third-week July survey, Lee's approval was 48.4% and Democratic Party support was 43.1%. At the time the president ran 5.3 percentage points ahead of his party, but the order has since flipped. The president's approval fell 13.6 percentage points, while the party slipped just 2.9 percentage points.
Gallup Korea found a similar pattern. In its third-week September survey released on the 18th, positive assessments of Lee came to 37%, the lowest since he took office, while negative assessments hit a high of 56%. Democratic Party support, at 40%, ran ahead of the president's positive rating.
The split assessment of the president and the party showed up even among core supporters. In Realmeter's third-week September survey, Democratic Party support among people in their 40s was 51.8%, while positive assessments of Lee came to only 38.9%, a gap of 12.9 percentage points. Among moderates, party support was 40.1% against 35.7% positive assessment of the president, 4.4 percentage points lower. That means a considerable number of voters back the Democratic Party while taking a different view of the president's handling of state affairs.
Housing and Personnel Cool Sentiment, Testing Party-Government Alignment
Housing and personnel decisions were the main factors dragging down the president's approval. In Gallup Korea's third-week September survey, housing policy was the most cited reason for disapproving of Lee at 20%, followed by personnel decisions at 16% and the economy and livelihood issues at 9%. Housing had been the top reason for disapproval since the fourth week of July, with personnel matters moving up after the second-round cabinet lineup was announced.
Dissatisfaction with housing policy is read as stemming from continued confusion over the government's policy direction at a time of heightened sensitivity to home prices and housing conditions. As a perception spread that a succession of measures had failed to calm market jitters, housing moved beyond an ordinary livelihood issue and fed into assessments of the president's management of state affairs.
On personnel, the issue has spread beyond confirmation hearing disputes to assessments of the president's vetting system. Yong Hye-in, nominated as minister of gender equality and family in the Aug. 30 reshuffle, withdrew first, and Kim Seung-won, the nominee for justice minister, stepped down on the 19th. Kim's case was unusual in that he withdrew after the Democratic Party unilaterally adopted his confirmation hearing report. It was the second failed nomination in this reshuffle alone and the fifth ministerial nominee to fall since the Lee administration took office. With the controversies repeating, voices within the ruling bloc have called for a fresh review of the vetting system.
This trend could weigh on the Democratic Party leadership, which has made party-government alignment a core principle. Party leader Kim Min-seok rose to the leadership stressing that alignment during the party convention, and has continued to present unity between the president and the ruling party as a central theme since taking office. The more assessments of the president and support for the Democratic Party move separately, the greater the chance the party shoulders the burden of the government's performance along with it.
Conversely, if public sentiment and party support move in different directions, pressure could build inside the Democratic Party to distance itself from the government or voice differentiated positions. Within the broader pro-government camp, figures such as Cho Kuk and Rhyu Si-min have openly expressed disagreement with the government's policy direction, and inside the Democratic Party, voices differing from the leadership have surfaced around Gyeonggi Province Governor Choo Mi-ae and others. Calls for differentiation from the leadership and the government that have stressed alignment are growing at the same time.
The core finding of the past two months of polling is not that Democratic Party supporters have defected en masse, but that more of the public is assessing the president and the party separately. That suggests dissatisfaction with the president is being separated from party support, leaving the Democratic Party under pressure to decide whether to share responsibility for the government's performance or differentiate itself in line with public sentiment. Some worry that if the president's approval does not clearly recover, the gap between his rating and the party's could turn into an internal debate over party-government relations. With the 2028 general election approaching, views may also split over how to define relations with the government and set the ruling bloc's course.
The Realmeter survey was conducted entirely by mobile phone using automated response system methodology. The response rate for the third-week September survey was 4.1%, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.0 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.
The Gallup Korea survey was conducted through computer-assisted telephone interviews using randomly selected virtual mobile numbers provided by the three major carriers. The response rate for the third-week September survey was 9.8%, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Further details are available on the website of the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission.
