Will turnout top 60 percent?

By Kim Se-jeong

The size of the voter turnout will directly impact on parties in the general election that will pick members of the 20th National Assembly.

In recent elections, a higher voter turnout has been beneficial for the opposition party, while a low turnout has been good for the ruling party.

The opposition party won most seats in the 17th National Assembly when the turnout was 60.6 percent. Conversely, the governing party won a majority in the next election when it was 46.1 percent.

Whether the turnout will top 60 percent or not is drawing keen interest.

The latest survey by the National Election Commission (NEC) of 1,500 people showed 66.6 percent said they would vote.

Although the real figure is expected to be smaller by about 5 percentage points, it is still high compared to the turnouts of previous elections — 54.2 percent in 2012 and 46.1 percent in 2008.

“Based on our projection and a high early voting rate, we predict the voter turnout will be somewhere around 60 percent,” said an NEC official. The early vote on April 8 and 9 saw a turnout of 12.2 percent.

According to the survey, voters in their 20s and 30s led the high voter turnout forecast — 55.3 percent of respondents in their 20s and 58.3 percent in their 30s said they would cast a ballot, both up from 2012’s 35.9 percent and 49.4 percent, respectively.

For people in their 60s, 75.7 percent said they would vote, down from 80.6 percent in the previous election. This could be a bad sign for the ruling Saenuri Party, because many senior citizens usually support the conservative party and have almost never missed out on voting.

The high voter turnout forecast is particularly exciting for the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea and the new minor People’s Party, because of previous successes.

A possible game changer is the weather. Rain is expected, and this seldom helps the turnout. Two previous general election days were rainy, and voter turnouts were low — 46.1 percent in 2008 and 54.2 percent four years ago. When it was sunny in 2000 and 2004, the turnouts were 57.2 percent and 60.6 percent, respectively.

It has been a common view that fine weather is advantageous to conservative parties and bad weather, to liberal parties, because young voters are likely to choose to go on outings if the weather is good. But the NEC said previous turnouts showed that was not always true.

The weather agency said the amount of rain anticipated is between 5 and 30 millimeters nationwide. Seoul, Gyeonggi and Gangwon provinces are expected to have more rain than other regions. The rain is forecast to stop during the day in Seoul area, while in the southern regions, it will continue until the evening.