Tight presidential race attracting record turnout in early voting

A voter casts their ballot at a polling station in Gwangju, Friday, the first day of the two-day early voting period for the 20th presidential election. Yonhap

Rival parties encourage supporters to cast early ballots

By Jung Da-min

With the two main rival parties, the ruling liberal Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and the main opposition conservative People Power Party (PPP), actively encouraging their supporters to participate in early voting for the 20th presidential election, the turnout is expected to reach a record high.

The turnout on the first day was 17.6 percent, compared with 11.7 percent from the first day of early voting in the 2017 election.

Political watchers said more voters were expected to participate in the two-day early voting period on Friday and Saturday, especially under the current pandemic conditions where the daily number of COVID-19 cases has continued to skyrocket over the past weeks.

Major presidential candidates, including the two leading rivals, Lee Jae-myung of the DPK and Yoon Suk-yeol of the PPP, as well as Sim Sang-jung of minor opposition progressive Justice Party, cast their ballots Friday. President Moon Jae-in also participated in early voting on the same day.

Major presidential candidates participate in early voting for the 20th presidential election, Friday, the first day of the two-day early voting period. From left are Lee Jae-myung of the ruling liberal Democratic Party of Korea at a polling station in Seoul's Jung District, Yoon Suk-yeol of the main opposition conservative People Power Party in Busan's Nam District and Sim Sang-jung of the minor opposition progressive Justice Party in Seoul's Jongno District. Joint Press Corps

The political parties have also encouraged their supporters to participate in early voting.

The conservative PPP's encouragement to vote early, however, is rather a new phenomenon to political watchers and the public as, in the past, the system had more commonly been promoted by the liberal and progressive political parties, since it was introduced in 2014.

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Political watchers said that the liberal bloc had often promoted early voting to their young supporters to increase their turnout, as many of them had not been able to vote on Election Day. Often, they had to go to work when it fell on a normal working day or viewed it as personal time, once Election Day was designated a public holiday.

But they said that this strategy of the liberal bloc is not an outdated one. First of all, the once widely accepted idea of many young people being supportive of the liberal bloc is no longer necessarily the case, as evidenced by recent elections, in which many of them instead supported conservative candidates.

More importantly, as the early voting system is now well established, more people, regardless of their age group, prefer to vote early. Many people find the early voting system more convenient, as they can vote from any region regardless of their registered address, political watchers said.

Park Sung-min, the president and founder of local political consulting firm MIN Consulting, said that the early voting turnout would not affect the overall turnout, especially for major elections like the presidential election, as they usually have a high turnout.

"The overall turnout matters, but the early voting turnout means nothing. For the main opposition PPP and Yoon Suk-yeol, they see that a high turnout would bring a favorable result, as it means that not only enthusiastic supporters of the liberal and conservative blocs, but other members of the general public, will participate in the election," Park said, weighing on the fact that recent opinion polls show that a majority of the public desires a leadership change.

Voters queue up to participate in early voting for the 20th presidential election, at a polling station in Gangneung, Gangwon Province, Friday, the first day of the two-day early voting period. Yonhap

Park said that he expects the overall turnout to be high also, regardless of the country's increasing number of COVID-19 cases, as Korea already experienced the 21st general election earlier on during the pandemic in 2020, and the overall turnout then recorded 66.2 percent ― the highest in 28 years.

"When there was a surefire winner in the opinion polls before the presidential election in 2007, Lee Myung-bak (of then-main opposition Hannara Party, a predecessor to the PPP), many liberal bloc supporters did not participate in the election, thinking that the result was a foregone conclusion. But the current situation is different, as the two leading rivals are in a neck-and-neck race," Park said.

Another political analyst, Cha Jae-won, a professor of special affairs at the Catholic University of Pusan, said that the conservative PPP adopting the election strategy of promoting early voting to increase the overall turnout of their supporters is not new.

"The previous concept of the early voting system being favorable to DPK supporters is no longer valid. In the past, the liberal bloc actively promoted the introduction of early voting and adopted it as their major election strategy while the conservative bloc cast doubt on its efficiency. But the situation has now changed," Cha said.

Meantime, both the DPK and the PPP have gone all-out to encourage their supporters' participation based on the belief that a high early voting turnout will work in their favor.

"Please vote for No. 1 candidate Lee Jae-myung for the future of the Republic of Korea, the peace and democracy of the Korean Peninsula. In every election, the side that comes to action with more urgency wins," said DPK Rep. Hong Young-pyo said Friday.

From the PPP's side, Rep. Kwon Young-se said, "We can win when we vote. If we vote early, we can win bigger."