By Kim Hyo-jin
The leader of the main opposition party, Moon Jae-in, continues to be the public’s preferred choice among possible candidates to be the next president, followed by his counterpart Kim Moo-sung for the Saenuri Party, according to a local poll, Monday.
Rep. Moon of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy has topped the polls over the last eight weeks but this was the first time that Rep. Kim of the Saenuri Party, who came third last week, was ranked in second place.
This is the first time that Kim has overtaken Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon in the poll on potential presidential candidates in four months.
In a survey conducted by Real Meter from Feb. 23 to 27, support for Moon stood at 27 percent while Kim got 11.8 percent, ahead of Park’s 11.6 percent.
Compared to the previous week, Kim’s rating increased by 2.8 percent while that for Park rose by a mere 0.4 percent.
The Seoul mayor’s approval rating has fallen continuously after it peaked at 20.6 percent in the fourth week of October in 2014.
Realmeter analyzed that Park supporters, who vary from centrists to progressives across the political spectrum, have shifted to favor Moon, thus helping Kim become the runner-up behind Moon’s lead.
The Head of Korea Society Opinion Institute Kim Gab-soo said that the party leaders’ rising popularity was chiefly due to frequent media exposure.
“Moon has been in the media more than the others in the process of the party convention,” he said. “That gave him more opportunities to speak about his political stance.”
He said such premium also applied to Saenuri Party chairman Kim.
The poll was conducted on 2,500 adults across the nation with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
The survey did not include U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who previously topped the list of promising potential presidential candidates, far outdistancing the others.
But Ban’s popularity rating has shown sign of declining recently, with another Realmeter poll conducted on Feb. 22 showing that Ban registered 14.9 percent rating, behind Moon.
Ban’s office has asserted that the U.N. leader has no room to engage in South Korea’s domestic politics due to his tight schedule and dealing with a variety of international issues.
But he has yet to declare whether he will run in the presidential election or not.
Political pundits share the notion that Ban will continue to remain viable as a presidential candidate, prompting the rival political parties to attempt to woo him to their side.