Decision 2007: The lay of the land

The pieces are falling into place.  The five front runners (and a host of dark horses) are positioning themselves for the 2007 presidential race.

Here are the front runners:

Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak of the Grand National Party (GNP)

former Prime Minister, acting President, mayor, governor, etc Goh Kun of the new People's Centered Party

GNP Chairwoman (and Korea's top female news maker) Park Geun-hye

Out-going Anti-Unification Minister Chung Dong-young of Our Open Party (OOP or Uri)

Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan

The presidential numbers

The Korea Times has come out with a poll on the presidential contenders:

Graphic from the Korea Times

Lee Myung-bak is now the front runner:

Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak placed first in the survey with an approval rating of 23.3 percent, overtaking former Prime Minister Goh Kun, who had topped most of the recent polls, by a tantalizing 0.5-percentage point.

Rep. Park Geun-hye, chairwoman of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP), found her place at third (19.9 percent) and Unification Minister Chung Dong-young was fourth (6.4 percent).

KTimes reporter Park Song-wu gets props for including some of the demographic breakdowns of supporters, which is at least as important as the raw numbers for analysis purposes:

Lee, former CEO of Hyundai Engineering and Construction, enjoys strong support from residents in Seoul (33.8 percent), Inchon and Kyonggi Province (29.1 percent), business owners (31.1 percent) and those in their 50s (30.5 percent)....

Goh's supporters are white-collar workers (28.4 percent), residents in the Cholla provinces (34.2 percent), Uri Party backers (32.5 percent) and Democratic Party supporters (41.3 percent).

Park, the third-placed runner, is still considered a strong candidate, who enjoys overall support from the Kyongsang provinces. She draws support from those over 60 (25.7 percent), housewives (28.6 percent), people who finished middle school and below (31.8 percent).

I should point out here that the margin of error for those subsets of the poll are going to be pretty high.  But they are still useful for spotting trends.

In an astute observation, Park points out that Chung's jumping back into the political area this soon might be a mistake:

But he has a turbulent road to travel this year, given that the Uri Party will have a tough fight to win the local elections in May. If the party fails to win the elections, which are considered a mid-term appraisal of the government, many people will take a dim view of Chung's future as a presidential candidate.

It is still waaaaay too early to know how things will shake down and almost anything can happen at this point (such as Oranckay's pet GNPer Sohn Hak-kyu catching fire).

Shifting party support before the spring elections

The Same survey also gave some background on how the parties are doing ahead of May's local elections:

In the survey of 1,010 adults conducted Dec. 27-28, 46.3 percent of the respondents said they will give support to GNP candidates in the May 31 local elections, followed by 20.9 percent for the ruling Uri Party and 8.1 percent for the pro-union Democratic Labor Party.

That looks pretty bleak but there is some good news.  The GNP's approval numbers (39.2) are lower than their electoral support numbers.  That would indicate to me that their voter support is soft.  On the other hand the OOP's approval numbers are a little higher than their support numbers (room for growth).  But even with that bit of good news, things are looking pretty bleak for the OOP unless they can turn things around.

Graphic from the Korea Times

OOP break-up watch

Be sure to check out Kim Du-woo's piece on the future break-up of Our Open Party (AKA: Uri) and why it might not be such a good thing for the GNP.  I'm still calling for the OOP to break up late this year although a debacle in the May elections might speed things up a bit.

More Korea Times polls

Here are a few more KTimes polls on the ratio of conservative to progressives, Roh's popularity and the relative importance of China and the USA to Koreans.

Comments

[usinkorea]

Does the former unification minister have a snowball's chance in hell of winning?

I remember the last election well. I've never been so interested in watching one - anywhere.

Having had to "endure" riding public transportation for several hours everyday while I was back in Korea for most of the 2002 orgy of hate, I found myself cynically rooting for now President Roh. Watching the election results via the internet, I chomped away madly at popcorn and was riveted to the screen. What a show!!