DP on track for landslide victory, veto override in reach

General election 2024

Published: 10 Apr. 2024, 18:33 Updated: 11 Apr. 2024, 04:01

DP on track for landslide victory, veto override in reach

Left: Democratic Party (DP) leader Lee Jae-myung, second from right, shakes hands with other party officials in the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, after exit poll results released on Wednesday evening predicted a landslide victory for the DP. Right: People Power Party (PPP) interim leader Han Dong-hoon, center, closes his eyes while watching election coverage in the PPP's situation room inside the legislature. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

The liberal Democratic Party (DP) appears on track to increase its majority in the 300-member National Assembly, according to an exit poll released after voting in the general election ended on Wednesday evening.

The acrimonious election was framed as a referendum on either President Yoon Suk Yeol or DP leader Lee Jae-myung, whose party has held a parliamentary majority for the past four years, and turnout was the highest for a general election in 32 years.

As of 4:00 a.m. Thursday, 97.21 percent of votes had been tallied, with the DP taking the lead in 161 out of 254 regional constituencies and the conservative People Power Party (PPP) ahead in 90 districts.

Although the exact share of seats won by each party in the new legislature will not be known until vote tallying wraps up early Thursday morning, the exit poll jointly conducted by the three terrestrial broadcasters KBS, MBC and SBS suggested that the DP had swept key battleground districts that had been fiercely contested by the PPP, which is aligned with the government.

The poll surveyed 359,750 voters at 1,980 polling stations nationwide while voting was underway. It has a 95-percent confidence interval and a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 to 7.4 percentage points.

According to KBS, the DP and the Democratic United Party (DUP) together are likely to win 178 to 196 seats, while the PPP and the People Future Party (PFP) are expected to win 87 to 105 seats combined.

The DUP and PFP are satellite parties created by the DP and PPP to compete for National Assembly seats distributed according to proportional representation. They will both likely merge into their parent parties after the election.

Meanwhile, MBC projected that the DP and DUP will likely win 184 to 197 seats and that the PPP and PFP will likely win 85 to 99 seats. SBS similarly predicted 183 to 197 seats for the DP-DUP alliance against 85 to 100 seats for the PPP-PFP coalition.

JoongAng Ilbo affiliate JTBC, a cable network, separately projected that the DP and DUP will likely win 168 to 193 seats and that the PPP and PFP will likely win 87 to 111 seats.

All three terrestrial broadcasters also projected that the liberal Rebuilding Korea Party, led by former Justice Minister Cho Kuk, will likely win 12 to 14 seats through proportional representation, buoying the chances the DP could build a coalition of more than 200 lawmakers that could override presidential vetoes.

But splinter parties led by defectors from the two major parties are predicted to fare poorly.

Former DP leader Lee Nak-yon's Saemirae Party is projected to pick up only 1 to 2 seats through proportional representation, while the Reform Party, led by former PPP leader Lee Jun-seok, is predicted to win 1 to 4 seats.

According to the National Election Commission (NEC), cumulative voter turnout as of 6 p.m. was 67 percent out of a total of 44.28 million eligible voters. Voting took place at 14,259 polling stations across the country from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Voters across 254 regional constituencies nationwide cast two ballots — one for a representative of their local district and another for one of 38 parties competing for 46 seats filled by party list proportional representation.

The NEC said it expects 70 to 80 percent of ballots at 254 vote tallying sites to be counted by 2 a.m. Thursday. Tallying is expected to take one to two hours longer than in previous elections as the watchdog is counting all ballots by hand to preempt fears of election fraud.

Participation on Election Day reflected the high turnout of 31.28 percent on Friday and Saturday — a record for early voting in a general election — and overall turnout exceeded the 66.2-percent turnout for the April 2020 general election, which took place at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Exit polls on early voters do not exist as they are barred by election regulations.

Voter participation this year was lower than the 77.1-percent turnout for the 20th presidential election two years ago, when Yoon eked out a victory against Lee.

PPP interim leader Han Dong-hoon and the rest of the party’s leadership appeared crestfallen as they watched a live broadcast of the exit poll results on a screen inside the PPP situation room in the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul.

Han said the results were “disappointing,” but added that he would “observe the choices made by the people until the very end.”

By contrast, the DP leader appeared pleased with the broadcasters' predictions but was restrained in his response to the exit poll.

People watch a live broadcast of general election outcome predictions based on the joint exit poll conducted by KBS, MBC and SBS on a television screen inside Yongsan Station in central Seoul on Wednesday evening. [NEWS1]

Speaking to reporters at the DP’s situation room in the legislature, Lee said that he would “watch the people’s decision with a humble heart.”

Cho, whose party’s share of proportional representation seats could tip the balance of power completely towards the DP, said the exit poll showed that “the people have clearly passed judgment against the Yoon administration.”

Calling the Yoon administration a “dictatorship run by prosecutors,” Cho called on the president to “humbly accept the result of the general election” and “apologize to the public for its various misdeeds.”

Cho also promised his party would push for a special counsel probe to investigate PPP leader Han over suspicions that an essay that his daughter had submitted to an academic database had been ghostwritten by an overseas writer.

The former justice minister was forced to resign from his post in 2019 after the state prosecution service launched an investigation into suspicions that he and his wife had falsified their children’s academic achievements to give them a leg up in university admissions. Both were later convicted.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]