Young women fueled President Lee's rise. Now they're turning away.

Support for President Lee Jae Myung among women in their 20s and 30s — once a key constituency for him — is declining, according to recent polls.

For 31-year-old Kwon Su-yeon, who has been on a house hunt for months, the confidence that led her to vote for Lee in last year's presidential election has since disappeared.

“It’s hard not to blame him,” Kwon told the JoongAng Ilbo on Wednesday. She is looking for a jeonse (lump-sum deposit) rental ahead of her wedding next year and has watched reasonably priced listings dry up.

"I knew buying a home wouldn't be easy under a Democratic Party [DP] government, but I never imagined it would be this hard to find even a jeonse rental,” Kwon said. “And now the Kospi is falling. After the government encouraged people to invest in domestic stocks…”

For Shin Hyun-ji, another 28-year-old woman who voted for Lee, the DP and the current administration are not different from the opposition People Power Party (PPP).

"What women's issues have they seriously addressed over the past year?" Shin said. "They've ignored women's reproductive rights, including the long-delayed approval of mifepristone, while scrapping the [prosecutorial] supplementary investigative authority, which has only made women less safe. I've decided I'll vote for a party with stronger progressive values."

Kwon and Shin are far from alone. The numbers suggest many young women are feeling the same way.

In July of last year, Lee’s approval rating among women in their 20s stood at 61 percent, while support among women in their 30s was 69 percent, according to Gallup Korea’s monthly data.

One year later, support had fallen sharply, to 45 percent among women in their 20s and 47 percent among women in their 30s. That represented declines of 16 and 22 percentage points, respectively — far steeper than Lee's overall 11-point drop in approval, from 64 percent to 53 percent over the same period.

Any rebound among women in their 20s proved short-lived. After a brief recovery in February, Lee's approval slipped to 48 percent in June and continued to fall in July.

Support among women in their 30s held steady in the 60-percent range before dropping to 55 percent in June and falling sharply again in July.

Given that the share of respondents withholding an opinion remained largely unchanged within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, the data suggest that defections among women in their 20s and 30s have been a major driver of Lee's declining approval.

The DP has seen a similar pattern.

Although the party still drew 42 percent support last month — only three percentage points lower than a year earlier — its standing among younger women has deteriorated much more sharply. Support among women in their 20s fell from 37 percent to 29 percent, while backing among women in their 30s declined from 48 percent to 39 percent.

The liberal faction has been caught off guard.

Women in their 20s and 30s were widely regarded as reliable supporters after playing an active role in rallies calling for the ouster of former President Yoon Suk Yeol and then voting overwhelmingly for Lee last year.

Some 58.1 percent of women in their 20s and 57.3 percent of women in their 30s voted for Lee, according to last year’s joint exit poll of the presidential election conducted by three terrestrial broadcasters. By comparison, PPP candidate Kim Moon-soo won 25.3 percent of the vote among women in their 20s and 31.2 percent among women in their 30s, according to the exit poll.

That changed in the June 3 local elections this year.

In the recent Seoul mayoral race, 53.6 percent of women in their 30s backed PPP candidate Oh Se-hoon, while 42.8 percent supported DP candidate Chong Won-o, according to the broadcasters' joint exit poll. Even there, the margin was only 7.1 percentage points.

"Even after losing the election, we failed to show we could change course on housing or women's rights,” a female DP lawmaker said. “They probably felt we took their support for granted.”

The decline in support toward Lee and the liberal party reflects a growing belief that supporting them no longer makes a difference, experts say.

"Unlike older voters, women in their 20s and 30s don't feel any deep allegiance to the governing camp,” Kim Bong-shin, representative of pollster Metavoice, said. “Once they stop believing it can deliver results, they're quick to walk away."

The DP, however, has struggled to find a way to win them back.

"If we push policies targeted at women, we'll immediately be accused of fueling gender divisions,” a first-term DP lawmaker said.

Behind that concern is the belief that the party should avoid repeating what it had done in 2022, when Lee's outreach to women's online communities drew backlash from young male voters. Lee lost in that presidential election.

The strategy was evident during last year's presidential race, when the DP deliberately avoided gender-specific promises. Instead, the party grouped young men and women under the broader banner of "young voters.”

A year later, Lee was asked about the governing party's weakening support among women in their 20s and 30s at a press conference marking his first year in office on June 8.

"It's difficult to draw any firm conclusions,” Lee answered. “We have to fear every single voter."

Even so, some in the DP believe the issue will work itself out over time.

“Support will naturally recover once problems such as housing and the Kospi are resolved,” a DP lawmaker said.

But not everyone in the DP agrees.

“The party needs to become more attuned to what men and women want, with policies tailored to each group,” another DP female lawmaker said.

BY PARK JUN-KYU [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]