54.8% of Lee Jae-myung's 'New' Support Base Abandoned Him in Just Four Months
Some 54.8% of President Lee Jae-myung's 'new' support base has abandoned him over the past four months, according to a recent survey. That is three times the defection rate of his traditional base, the 'old Lee Jae-myung' supporters, which stood at 19.8%.
The Hankyoreh, the Korean Party Studies Association and research firm STI held a forum titled "Democracy and Party Politics Today: Voter Perceptions and Political Mobilization" at the National Assembly Members' Office Building in Yeouido, Seoul, on the afternoon of October 23, where they released the findings of their "2025–2026 Voter Panel Survey." A panel survey involves repeatedly polling the same respondents; this study tracked more than 1,000 identical respondents across five rounds beginning in May of last year.
President Lee's approval rating for his handling of state affairs fell from 66.9% in the fourth round of the survey in May of that year to 49.3% in the fifth round in September — a drop of 17.6 percentage points in four months. Of the 1,092 respondents who gave a positive assessment of the president's performance in the May survey, 331 turned negative or answered "don't know" by the September round.
The two groups of defectors shared a common reason for their departure: housing policy. In both groups, the share who viewed the government's real estate policy positively was only in the single digits — 7.3% among old-base defectors and 5.0% among new-base defectors. Their assessments of the new criminal justice system diverged, however: 53.8% of old-base defectors rated it positively, while 77.1% of new-base defectors viewed it negatively.
Lee Se-young, an editorial writer at The Hankyoreh who served as a discussant at the forum, said, "For the president's policy agenda to get back on track, public trust in the leader personally is essential, and that requires self-reflection, a sense of responsibility, and institutional restraint on the part of the ruler himself."
The fifth round of the survey was conducted from September 15 to 20 among 1,592 respondents via online and telephone interviews. The margin of error was ±2.5 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.
