Lee Leads Roh and Chung in Polls

In a telephone survey on 1553 adults by The Donga Ilbo and Korea Research Center (KRC), Lee Hoi-chang, the presidential candidate of the Grand National Party(GNP) took the lead followed by Rep. Chung Mong-jun of the National Alliance Party 21 with 22.4% and Roh Moo-hyun of the Millennium Democratic Party(MDP) with 16.8%.

The poll shows that the popularity of Lee increased by 4.9% and Roh by 2.1% while that of Chung declined by 4.7% compared to the poll conducted last month by Shindonga, a monthly magazine, and KRC.

Compared to the most recent poll jointly conducted by MBC, a broadcasting company, and KRC, the popularity of Roh slightly declined from 19% to 16.8% while that of Chung is on the increase from 20.7% to 22.4%. The results are seemingly affected by the recent exodus of MDP lawmakers and the official establishment of Chung`s National Alliance Party 21 on Nov. 5.

In a virtual competition assuming that Roh and Chung field a single candidate, Lee takes the lead whether his competitor is Roh or Chung. In the virtual two-way competition, Lee defeats Roh 4.1 % to 31.6% while defeating Chung 38.7% to 36.3%.

Asked whether Roh and Chung could field a single presidential candidate, 39.8% of respondents said yes, 42.7% said no. But the number of those who said yes rose almost twice to 39.8% from 18.8% at the newspaper`s survey on Sep. 24 right after Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving Day.

Meanwhile 52.35 of the respondents said that the massive breakaway of MDP lawmakers from their party is not helpful for single presidential candidacy, much larger than 26.5% of those who said it is of help.

34.7% of Roh`s proponents said that they would vote for Chung if Roh withdraws from the presidential race, while proponents fo Chung said they would vote for Roh if Chung gives up his candidacy. This finding shows that the effect of single candidacy will become larger when Chung is fielded as a single candidate.

In the survey, 30.3% of the respondents said they support the GNP, 15.9% the MDP, 4.7% the National Alliance Party 21 and 0.6% the United Liberal Democrats (ULD).

The margin of error of the survey is ±2.5% with 95% of confidence level. Access to www.donga.com for details.

sunny60@donga.com