▲ The three leadership candidates of the Democratic Party at the Jeonbuk joint speech event
The Democratic Party will hold its regional primary for Seoul and Gyeonggi today (August 16) for the August 17 national convention to elect its new leadership.
Following party leadership candidate Kim Min-seok's majority win in yesterday's Jeonnam-Gwangju and Jeonbuk primaries, all eyes are on whether candidate Jeong Chung-rae can create a turning point today in the final leg of the regional primaries.
The Democratic Party will hold joint speech events for the regional primaries this morning at the indoor gymnasium of Suwon Comprehensive Stadium in Gyeonggi Province, and in the afternoon at KINTEX in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province.
Candidate Song Young-gil, party leadership candidates Jeong Chung-rae and Kim Min-seok, and Supreme Council candidates Choe Min-hee, Kim Yong, Kim Young-ho, Seo Mi-hwa, Han Min-su, Lee Seong-yun, Park Sun-won, and Lim Mi-ae will deliver platform speeches.
The results of the ordinary party member votes for Seoul and Gyeonggi will be announced following the speech events.
The Democratic Party conducted online voting from August 12 to 13 and ARS voting from August 14 to 15.
Candidate Kim took a huge step closer to victory yesterday by sweeping Jeonnam-Gwangju and Jeonbuk, which were key battlegrounds in this party leadership primary race along with the metropolitan area.
Prior to the Honam regional primaries, the cumulative vote share gap (excluding a 5% weighting for Gyeongnam, Daegu, and Gyeongbuk) between candidate Kim, who was leading in first place, and candidate Jeong in second place was a mere 1.48 percentage points.
However, in the Honam regional ordinary party member vote, candidate Kim won 57.54%, defeating candidate Jeong (32.65%) by a margin of 24.89 percentage points.
Riding the momentum of the Honam primary results, candidate Kim widened the gap with candidate Jeong to 14.07 percentage points from their previously razor-thin lead in cumulative vote shares.
Nevertheless, the fact that the ordinary party member voter turnout in Seoul and Gyeonggi is higher than that in the Honam region remains one of the remaining variables.
The online voter turnout rates for Gyeonggi and Seoul stood at 46.74% and 45.31%, respectively, which are about 10 percentage points higher than the turnout rates of 37.63% for Jeonnam-Gwangju and 35.22% for Jeonbuk.
If candidate Jeong achieves a landslide victory by more than 20 percentage points among ordinary party members in Seoul and Gyeonggi—who account for roughly one-third of all ordinary party members, similar to Honam—a reversal can still be expected.
Candidate Song, who has recorded a cumulative vote share of 9.65%, is determined to do his utmost until the end.
Once today's Seoul and Gyeonggi regional primaries conclude, the Democratic Party will combine the results with delegate votes and public opinion polls—which account for 30% of the total vote—to announce the final results tomorrow (August 17) at the 3rd regular national convention to be held at the Daejeon Convention Center.
(Photo: Yonhap News)
※
Copying, redistribution, and unauthorized use in AI training are strictly prohibited.