Ahn polled as favorite presidential candidate
By Kim Hyo-jin
Ahn Cheol-soo
Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo, co-chairman of the opposition People’s Party, has topped the list of potential presidential candidates, beating Moon Jae-in, a former chairman of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK), according to the latest poll, Friday.
A Gallup Korea poll that interviewed 1,001 people found Ahn had a 21 percent approval rating ― the first time since the pollster began the survey in August 2015.
Ahn’s approval was an 11-percentage-point gain compared with that of the previous poll from the second week of March.
Ahn led his three-month-old party to win 38 parliamentary seats and establish it as the solid third party in the National Assembly.
Moon ranked second in the poll with 17 percent, despite a gain of 1 percentage point and former Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon was third with 7 percent.
Incumbent Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and former Saenuri Party floor leader Rep. Yoo Seong-min rounded out the top five after registering 6 percent and 4 percent, respectively.
Former Saenuri Chairman Kim Moo-sung had a sharp drop in his approval rating, from 11 percent to 3 percent, during the same period. The number is the lowest since the poll’s inception.
Meanwhile, President Park Geun-hye’s approval rating edged up slightly, standing at 30 percent. It was an increase of 1 percentage point from the previous week, the lowest since she took office in 2013.
However, still more than half of Koreans, at 56 percent, disapproved of Park’s job performance, the poll said.