Belated Election Round Up


Even this place voted Democrat
Wikipedia actually has a pretty good summary of the results in English and if you can read Hangul namu wiki has a better run down  so this will be pretty brief.

Things that went as expected

1) Big victory for the Democrats.

They got 51% of the vote nationally (tbh a bit less than I expected) with a 23% lead over the 2nd place Liberty Korea party. They won 12 out of 13 national assembly special elections. Won all but 3 of the races for Governors and Metropolitan Mayors (basically the governors of big cities). They won 652 out of 824 of the seats in provincial assemblies and 1638 out of 2926 seats in county level elections (when rural, Liberty Korea supporting areas get more seats). It is the most convincing win in a Korean election since 1960. Even dictators who had complete control of the media, rigged the elections and had no intention of giving up power even if they somehow lost didn’t win by this much.  They even won in Gumi which was the birthplace of Park Chung-hee the military dictator of Korea in the 60s and 70s who is still perhaps the most important figure in the history of the Liberty Korea party and its predecessor parties (his daughter was President until she was impeached in 2017). They have a big statue of him, named their sports stadium after him and do ceremonies on his birthday. But even they elected Democrats.

2) The crushing of the Righteous Future party

They got just 8% of the vote. Their biggest name Ahn Cheol-soo (once the most popular politician in Korea) came third in the Seoul mayor’s race with 19.6% of the vote. They didn’t come close in any of the governor or big mayoral races. In fact they didn’t win any mayoral races and have just 5 provincial legislators and 21 local councillors. 

Being a third party (or as they have now become a 4th party) in a mostly First Past the post system is hard and to have any hope you of success need to have support that is highly concentrated in specific geographic areas. 8% of the vote everywhere means zero seats whereas 2% of the vote in most places and 40% in a few will win you a few elections. For example the Liberal Democrats in the UK do well in the south west of England, in ‘fringe’ areas of the UK (far Northern Scotland, very rural bits of England and Wales) and incredibly wealthy areas with a liberal bent. This concentration of support in specific areas means they always win at least a handful of seats even when they poll in the single figures nationally. However the Righteous Future party did equally badly everywhere which means they were almost completely wiped out. In fact the Democracy and Peace party, a centre-left split from the Righteous Future party managed to outperform their former colleagues in seats despite getting far fewer votes. They got just 1.5% of the vote nationally but this was all concentrated in Jeolla (south west area which contains all the Democrats safest seats) and managed to win 5 mayoral races and 49 local councillors. What will add to the worries of the Righteous Future Party is that the Liberty Korea party’s leader Hong Jun-pyo has resigned. He is a walking, talking caricature  of a Liberty Korea politician who is seemingly designed to repel the large chunk of Korean voters who do not belong to either of the main factions in Korean politics. While it is not clear who the Liberty Korea party will select next it is at least possible they could pick someone more appealing to the swing voters and moderate conservatives who voted for Righteous Future in 2018.

In National Assembly elections 47 out of 300 seats are awarded via proportional representation and this looks being the only way the Righteous Future Party will be able to secure seats in the future.

Something I didn’t expect

The relative success of the Justice Party. They got 8% of the vote making them Korea’s third biggest party and giving them the best result of a party to the left of the Democrats since 2012. While the First Past the Post nature of the elections meant they didn’t even come close in any of the main elections and didn’t even mange to win a local mayoral race they did win 11 provincial legislators seats (they didn’t win any 4 years ago) and 26 local council races (up from 11 4 years ago).  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Opponent- same results

Image
New leader of Liberty Korea Hwang Kyo-Ahn has not changed their fortunes.  Nothing much has changed in Korean opinion polling in the last few months. In the opinion polls Moon still has a approval rating of around 50%. His Democratic Party continues to lead in the polls although by 10-15 points rather than 20 point leads that were common at the start of the year.  What is interesting about this is the news has not been good for Moon in the last few months. Moon's main weakness has always been his failure to deliver on his (unrealistic) pledge to boost Korean growth. In fact Korea's economy shrank by 0.3% in the first quarter of 2019. Meanwhile the North Korean peace process has stalled- missile tests, attacks on Moon from Pyongyang and the Americans seizing North Korean ships suggest if anything the process is going backwards. Yet Moon still remains popular compared to past Korean presidents at this stage in their term while his party is on track for a big win in the 202
Read more

Nowon C by-election

Image
About the constituency: The constituency is in the far North-East of the city of Seoul- This is an Assembly Constiuency map of Seoul with Nowon C highlighted in red: Nowon is the densest populated area of Seoul though is bordered to the north by relatively mountainous areas. It is a fairly standard residential suburb of Seoul.   Past results: The district has been highly unpredictable in the past returning candidates from all over the political spectrum in the past. However, one trend is that the Liberty Korea party and its predecessor parties have been in gradual decline here for a decade. The neighbouring Nowon A and Nowon B districts are both held by the Democratic party Previous Results by % (winners % in bold): Democrat* Liberty Korea* Minjung* Righteous Future* Justice party* other 2004 general election 45.2* 37.0 6.8 Did not run Did not run 11.0* 2008 general e
Read more

Songpa B by-election

Image
Jamsil baseball stadium  in the north of the constituency. Picture  By Cyberdoomslayer. About the district: Songpa is in Seoul. It is one of the richest areas in all of Korea right next to Gangnam . Songpa B is mostly the western part of Songpa, stretching from the Jamsil Baseball stadium in the north to the Garak market in the South.   The further north you can go in constituency the richer it becomes and the more likely residents are to vote for the Liberty Korea party. It is also a swing district (bear in mind Grand National and New Frontier are both previous names of Liberty Korea)' 2004 Grand National49.5 Our Open Party 43.5 New Millennium Democratic7.0 (the Our Open Party and the New Millennium Democratic Party had only split shortly before the election and recombined shortly afterwards, good work there guys….) 2008 Grand National 61.6 Democrat 35.7 2012 New Frontier 50% Democratic 46% 2016 Democratic - 44%* Independent (w
Read more