By Yoon Won-sup
Staff Reporter
The approval rating gap of Lee Myung-bak, former Seoul mayor, and Park Geun-hye, former chairwoman of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) has narrowed down to a single digit for the first time, according to a survey.
The survey, conducted Saturday by Media Research at the request of The Korea Times and its sister paper Hankook Ilbo, showed that the gap shrank from 28 percentage points in February to 9.2 percentage points in July.
The poll showed 34.8 percent of the respondents picked Lee, 66, as the next most viable president, while 25.6 percent of them considered the 55-year-old Park. It is mainly because Lee saw his popularity continuously shrink, while Park reflected the opposite.
The narrowed gap was also confirmed in a similar question of the likely standard-bearer of the GNP to run for the presidency since 43.8 percent of the surveyed favored Lee while 35 percent preferred Park.
In June, 50.7 percent picked Lee while 31.8 percent selected Park. So the gap fell from 18.9 to 8.8 percentage points in one month.
Park's rising is largely thanks to her attack on questionable wealth accumulation of the former Seoul mayor in a televised in-house hearing of screening presidential candidates of the GNP on Thursday.
The survey showed that 34.4 percent of the respondents answered Park performed better during the hearing than Lee while 12.8 percent thought the opposite. Another 37.6 percent said they performed equally, feeling that they tied.
About 69.9 percent said Lee's allegations were not cleared and 19.8 percent said the allegations were clarified. But 31.9 percent said Park's allegations were clarified while 49 percent said not.
The survey also showed that 43.5 percent said the hearing will positively influence Park's popularity while only 16.6 percent said it will be helpful for Lee.
Meanwhile, no response to the question of the likely next president increased from 14.3 percent in February to 22.8 percent in July.
An official of Media Research said that the number of swing voters increased seemingly because of hard criticism put on each other. But not all of Lee's former supporters have switched in favor of Park, with many of them deciding to take a wait-and-see attitude. The poll showed one out of every five respondents answered their change of mind on who should become the next president. It means the recent desertion of Lee supporters.
With the GNP's primary slated for Aug. 20, 48.8 percent said the party will not be able to unite for the successful candidate while 41 percent said the party will.