Korean Elections Blog

Ri Sol Ju, Kim Jeong Un, Moon Jae-in and Kim Jung-sook at Mt. Baekdu in North Korea.   Moon Jae-in was in Pyongyang last week for his third summit with Kim Jeong Un. Highlights included a trip to Mt Baekdu (pictured above) which is the highest point on the Korean peninsula and important in traditional Korean mythology and in the mythology of the ruling Kim family in North Korea. Moon also gave a speech at the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang. Moons approval rating has been falling quite sharply ever since the last summit which was followed by a stunning victory for the Democrats (Moon’s party) in the local elections in June. From a high of 79% in the first week of June Moon fell to 49% in the first week of September. He’s enjoyed a post summit bounce in the Gallup polls taking him up to 61% of people saying he is ‘doing well’ with 30% saying he is ‘doing badly.’ Realmeter show the same trend- Moon has reserved his downward trend and has gone up 9% in one week to an approv...

Sim Sang-jung Assembly member for Goyang A, and former presidential candidate for the Justice Party who have been enjoying a good few weeks in the polls.  Short version: Moon and the Democrats have had quite a massive chunk out of their ratings over the last month but were doing so well to start with they are still doing fine. The Democrats remain incredibly popular and Moon remains significantly more popular than his party. Moon’s very popular handling of the North Korea issue has been out of the news and voters minds and his still popular but nowhere as popular handling of the economy more prominent so Moon’s ratings and his parties are down a bit. Also a scandal around a lefty blogger who may or may not have had had ties to the Moon administration has been in the news a lot. Moon Jae in approval Real Meter has him at 62% approval 33% disapproval. This follows a quite sharp decline in his approval ratings and uptick in his disapproval since the local elections ...

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 2 nd 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...

Exit polls are generally of excellent quality in Korea so these won't be too far off the actual results. By-elections The pre-election polls were generally pretty much spot on if  the exit poll is right. In the 12 special elections the Democat is winning by a country mile in 10 of them so it is pretty safe to say the Democrats have held the 4 seats they were defending and have gained 6 seats tonight.  They may add a seventh in Jechon-Dayang. It was also forecast by the opinion polls to be a fairly comfortable win for the Democrats but the Democrats lead by just 2% according to the exit poll which is within the exit poll's margin of error. This is a pretty safe seat for the Liberty Korea party normally- they got 58% of the vote here in the 2016 national assembly elections so even a narrow defeat here for the Democrats is pretty impressive.  In their ultra-safe seat of Gimcheon the Liberty Korea party seems to have held off a challenge from an independent. Pre-...

Here is a summary for the latest poll from every National Assembly By-election.  Democrat holds Incheon Namdong A is set to be retained by the Democrats- they have a 31% lead over the Liberty Korea candidate. Cheonan C is also going to be a Democrat hold with their candidate currently having a 35% lead. Seoul Songpa B the Democrat has a 20% lead over the Liberty Korea candidate. This is a swing district which was won at the last election by a Democrat who defected to the Righteous Future party. Gimhae B- the latest polls show the Democtats retaining the seat by 35%. Democrat Gains In Seoul Nowon C the Democrat has a 35% lead over the Righteous Future candidate. This would be a gain for the Democrats from the Rigteous Future party. Cheonan A is set to be a Democrat gain with their candidate leading the Liberty Korea canididate by 28%. Busan Haeundae B latest poll has 19% lead for the Democrat over the Liberty Korea candidate (though ‘Don’t Know ...

Moon Jae in's approval ratings have shown a miniscule drop across the board. Gallup has him on 75% approval (literally ‘doing well) and 16%  saying he is doing badly as President. This is pretty much identical to every weeks figures in May. 48% of people who approve of Moon gave a reason related to the North Korean summits as their main reason for their approval (61% if you assume ‘foreign affairs’ refers to North Korea).     Real Meter has him at 72% approval, 22% disapproval Research View has him at 71%-25% approval They also give a good hint as to why Moon Jae-in’s ratings have been largely unaffected by the cancellation of the US-North Korea summit (though it now looks like this will go ahead). 41% of respondents blame the US for the cancellation, 31% blame North Korea with just 13% respondents blaming South Korea. Party scores Gallup shows very stable polling figures. The Democratic party are on 53%, Liberty Korea on 11% and Righ...

The Righteous Future party's candidate for mayor of Seoul Ahn Cheol-so Righteous Future is a fairly recent merger of two political parties. The People’s party was founded in 2016 after tech entrepreneur Ahn Cheol-so lost a power struggle for control of the Democratic party with Moon Jae-in. They  did surprisingly well in the National Assembly elections securing 25 seats (out of 253) in the First Past the Post section of the election and actually coming 2nd in the proportional section of the election. They presented themselves as anti-establishment and as a distinct alternative to the traditional two party politics in Korea  with some people interpreting this as them being to the left of the Democratic party though others viewing them as a centrist choice. Ahn ran for President in 2017 on an explicitly centerist campaign and almost drew level with Moon Jae-in in the opinion polls a month before the election. However many of his supporters drifted back to th...