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Grand National Party presidential candidate Lee Myung-bak still leads the pack but the approval ratings of the United New Democratic Party¡¯s Chung Dong-young are rising, according to the first survey since all five parties nominated their presidential candidates. In the survey by Gallup Korea at the request of the Chosun Ilbo on Tuesday, Lee had a 55.5 percent support rating, up 1.4 percentage points from Sept. 29. The opposition nominee remains some 40 points ahead of the runner-up. But after he was announced as the presidential candidate at the UNDP convention on Monday, Chung saw his approval ratings rise to 16.2 percent, up 9.2 points from 7 percent before the primary.
Moon Kook-hyun, a former chief executive of Yuhan Kimberly won 5.3 percent, a 1.6 percentage point rise from the previous poll. The support ratings of Rhee In-je grew 1.5 points to 3.0 percent after he was chosen as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. Democratic Labor Party Kwon Young-ghil also received 3.0 percent.
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(From left) Presidential candidates Lee Myung-bak of the Grand National Party, Chung Dong-young of the United New Democratic Party, Moon Kook-hyun, a former chief executive of Yuhan Kimberly, Rhee In-je of the Democratic Party, and Kwon Young-ghil of the Democratic Labor Party.
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The survey also asked what support rating would be if the broad ruling camp selects a single candidate among Chung, Moon and Rhee, and found he would be behind Lee by 40 to 50 percentage points. Thus if Chung was chosen, he would gain 23 percent while Lee would win 61.7 percent with Democratic Labor Party candidate Kwon Young-ghil coming third with 8.8 percent. If Moon is put up as the sole candidate, he would reap 16.4 percent, some 47 percent behind Lee, who would then land 63.9 percent. In this case, Kwon would win 12.2 percent. If Rhee is picked as the only liberal competitor against Lee, he is would gain 12.7 percent, even lower than Kwon¡¯s 15.7 percent. The GNP candidate would then defeat them by a massive margin with 64.4 percent.
The survey had a confidence level of 95 percent with a margin of error of 3.3 percent.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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