Early voting for local elections ends with 20.62% turnout

May 30, 2022, 09:16 am

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An official walks at an office of the National Election Commission in the city of Gwacheon, south of Seoul, on May 29, 2022./ Source: Yonhap News

AsiaToday reporters Jeong Geum-min & Chun Hyun-bin

The early voting for June 1 local elections ended with a turnout of 20.62 percent on Saturday, the highest for any local elections since 2014 when early voting was first introduced. One of the reasons behind such high early voting turnout is that both the ruling People Power Party (PPP) and the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) encouraged people to participate in early voting.

According to the National Election Commission (NEC), two-day early voting for Wednesday’s local elections ended with a turnout of 20.62 percent. More than 9.13 million of the country’s 44.3 million eligible voters cast their ballots during early voting, the election watchdog said. The previous record of turnout was 20.1 percent for early voting in the 2018 local elections.

Both the ruling and the main opposition parties claim that high voting turnout can ensure victory in the upcoming local elections. The PPP believes that the turnout of the conservative voters in the early voting was low, and expects more supporters to vote in the main vote. The ruling party has a much stronger support base among voters in their 50s and 60s than the main opposition party. As the older voters are more likely to cast their ballots in the main vote rather than in early voting, the PPP is encouraging more supporters to participate in the main vote.

“We have the main vote coming. We hope that the turnout will be around 60-70 percent,” said PPP supreme council member Chung Mi-kyung. The PPP believes that the increase in early voting turnout is not that high, and expects that the increase in the final turnout will work in their favor. High voter turnout means that the non-partisan and swing voters, in addition to the strong supporters of both parties, will participate in the voting, and the party expects that it will act favorably on them.

However, considering that early voting turnout for the March 9 presidential election was a record 36.93 percent, and that for the 2020 general elections was 26.69 percent, industry observers say the final turnout for the upcoming local election will be around 60 percent. Therefore, the PPP is expected to focus on increasing the final voter turnout by putting all of its efforts during the remaining period until the election day.

The turnout for early voting for National Assembly by-elections, that will be held simultaneously with the local elections, came to 21.76 percent. Of the country’s 1.2 million eligible voters, 261,308 voters cast their ballots.

The Gyeyang district of Incheon, where DP’s former presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung is running for a seat, had a relatively high turnout with 24.94 percent. The turnout for early voting for the Bundang district of Seongnam, where People’s Party candidate Ahn Cheol-soo declared his bid to run, stood at 22.56 percent.

The DP is welcoming the high voter turnout, claiming that it is the result of “the gathering of supporters”. Traditionally, the lower the turnout, the more favorable for the party with a strong local support base. The DP won 14 out of 17 regional head posts of government and 150 out of 226 head positions of local governments in the local elections four years ago.

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