S Korean 4/7 By-Elections

[H. Ross Peron]

South Korean will be holding by-elections on April 7th municipal positions, the most notable of which will be for the Mayor of Seoul and Busan. Both Seoul and Busan saw its incumbent centre-left Democratic Party mayors suffers sexual harassment allegations. Seoul Mayor Park Won-Soon ended up committing suicide while Busan mayor Oh Keo-Don resigned. Despite a historical landslide victory in last year's legislative elections, the Democratic Party is not in good shape against a resurgent right due to scandals relating to real-estate and disputes over the reform of the prosecutors' office. Incumbent President Moon Jae-In's approval rating has fallen to 34.1%, the lowest in his administration (http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20210322000121).

As a result of unpopularity of the ruling party, Democratic candidates have been trailing significantly in both mayoral races. The only hope for Democrats (who nominated a female candidate, Park Young-Sun) in the Seoul mayoral race was that the right was divided between former Seoul mayor Oh Se-Hoon of the conservative People's Power Party and Ahn Cheol-Soo of the centrist People's Party. However, Oh and Ahn managed to come to an agreement to unite behind the candidate who polled the most support. Today Oh Se-Hoon was selected as the candidate of the unified conservative bloc, following a telephone poll of Seoul residents (https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20210323002751315?section=national/politics). This is bad news for Ahn, who has had a meandering and largely unsuccessful political career for the past 10 years. Conversely, should he win it will be something of a homecoming for Oh who resigned 10 years ago as mayor after losing a referendum on a free school lunch measure which he opposed. It was in that mayor by-election that Park Won-Soon was first elected and where Ahn first seriously considered a political run before declining to do so. Should the conservatives win, it will doubtlessly be seen as a sign of the right's resurgence after their catastrophic collapse following the impeachment over former President Park Geun-Hye.



Wikipedia has a fairly good article on S. Korean politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_South_Korean_by-elections

[Astatine]

Should the conservatives win, it will doubtlessly be seen as a sign of the right's resurgence after their catastrophic collapse following the impeachment over former President Park Geun-Hye.

Hasn't Park Geun-Hye also seen a rise in her popularity? If I remember correctly, shortly after the Supreme Court upheld the ruling of 20 years in prison, a poll showed that 48 % of South Koreans wanted her pardoned, and some Democratic politicians have floated with that idea since.

[PSOL]

Why has the popularity of president Moon and the Democratic Party collapsed as of late?

[Octowakandi]

Interesting. I was following this race earlier in the month and it looked catastrophic for the right even outside of vote splitting with the Democratic Party nom winning even in a head to head. Did something happen recently?

Also feel kind of bad for Ahn. I'm pretty sure he'd be pretty good if he actually got into office, but he's had bad luck.

[urutzizu]

Exit polls:

Seoul


Busan


Big oof for Moon.

[H. Ross Peron]

Exit polls:

Seoul


Busan


Big oof for Moon.

https://twitter.com/AsiaElects/status/1379755855260704769

https://twitter.com/AsiaElects/status/1379755972231450625

Turnout was fairly high for a by-election at 54.4% in Seoul and 49.4% an hour before polls closed.

[H. Ross Peron]

https://twitter.com/BluRoofPolitics/status/1379763208093904901

[H. Ross Peron]

So with 100% of votes counted, the final results for the Seoul and Busan mayoral races are as follows. https://namu.wiki/w/2021%EB%85%84%20%EC%9E%AC%EB%B3%B4%EA%B6%90%EC%84%A0%EA%B1%B0/%EA%B0%9C%ED%91%9C%20%EA%B2%B0%EA%B3%BC

Seoul:
Oh Se-Hoon (People's Power)-2,798,788 (57.5%)
Park Young-Sun (Democratic)-1,907,336 (39.2%)

Busan:
Park Hyung-Joon (People's Power)-961,576 (62.7%)
Kim Young-Choon (Democratic)-528,135 (34.4%)

[Octowakandi]

This is very interesting in that it means PPP isn't so weak that it's easy for Prosecutor General Yoon to take over and he'll have to work with the party figures. But ultimately I don't think he will be nominated who wants someone who hasn't worked with the party to just take over your party and lead it to an election that you have a very good chance of winning anyway.

Oh I imagine will be talked about for President, but I don't think he can realistically run one year after being elected and considering his history of blowing and almost blowing elections. The biggest quesiton is who the conservatives will nominate considering the concern with Yoon being not a party creature and the complete lack of bench in the party. The PPP would be in a better situation if Na Kyung-won was nominated for Mayor in that she would actually be in a decent position for 2022.

[xelas81]

The 2022 SK president election is less than one year from now on March 9, 2022.
And provincial and local election will be held June 6th 2022.