Park Geun-hye enjoys overwhelming lead in pres. candidates poll

A public survey has found that ruling Grand National Party bigwig Park Geun-hye enjoys an overwhelming lead among leading candidates for next year`s presidential election.

In the opposition camp, Moon Jae-in, a former high-ranking official of the previous administration and now chairman of the Roh Moo-hyun Foundation, made significant gains in the joint poll conducted by The Dong-A Ilbo and Korea Research. The survey was only conducted on Seoul residents.

Park had an approval rating of 31.5 percent in a survey of 1,000 Seoul residents, maintaining her undisrupted lead for three years and six months since the inauguration of the Lee Myung-bak administration. By district, she enjoyed higher support in the Gangnam district (36.4 percent) and the Gangbuk and Gangseo districts (32.3 percent).

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon enjoyed an approval rating of 3.3 percent despite his recent declaration not to run in next year’s election. In the ruling camp, Gyeonggi Province Gov. Kim Moon-soo had an approval rating of 2.8 percent followed by Rep. Chung Mong-joon with 0.9 percent.

Moon garnered an approval rating of 5.7 percent, the highest among opposition candidates. He might enjoy an even higher rating nationwide, however, since the poll did not include residents of the Gyeongsang provinces, the region he hails from.

Main opposition Democratic Party Chairman Sohn Hak-kyu saw his approval rating decline to 4.7 percent. Rhyu Si-min of the People’s Participatory Party, who ranked second after Park by garnering 11.9 percent in a March poll, earned just 3.2 percent in the latest poll.

A whopping 43.7 percent of Seoul residents did not respond to the poll, suggesting a potentially high ratio of swing votes in next year`s presidential election depending on changes in the political landscape.

bsism@donga.com