[Anchor]
The results of the ordinary party member voting for Seoul and Gyeonggi, the final and most crucial battlegrounds of the Democratic Party's regional primary tour spanning three weeks, were just announced. Kim Min-seok came in first among the candidates for party leader. In terms of cumulative vote shares, the gap between first-place candidate Kim and second-place candidate Jung Chung-rae stands at 8.41 percentage points. The Democratic Party's new leadership will be finalized tomorrow (August 17) by combining these results with public opinion poll outcomes.
Reporter Park Jae-yeon has the details.
[Reporter]
In the ordinary party member vote in Seoul and Gyeonggi for the election of the Democratic Party's new leadership, party leader candidate Kim Min-seok placed first with 46.66% of the vote.
Candidate Jung Chung-rae finished second with 46.28%, and candidate Song Young-gil came in third with 7.06%.
With these results, the cumulative vote shares are tallied at 49.91% for candidate Kim and 41.51% for candidate Jung, bringing the margin to 8.4 percentage points.
Following candidate Kim's landslide victory in yesterday's Honam primary, the vote share gap with second-place candidate Jung had widened significantly to 14 percentage points, but today's tight race in Seoul and Gyeonggi narrowed the margin.
However, as candidate Kim maintains the momentum secured by yesterday's decisive win in Honam, some analyze that the argument for stabilizing relations between the party and the administration also influenced the party sentiment in the capital area.
During joint speeches, the three candidates appealed that they each were the right person to back the success of the Lee Jae-myung administration.
[Kim Min-seok / Democratic Party Leader Candidate : The party must be stable. Only then can the party and the administration be stable. Only then can the government be stable. Only then can the economy be stable.]
[Jung Chung-rae / Democratic Party Leader Candidate : A person who has kept their loyalty will keep it again. Someone who betrays once can betray again.]
[Song Young-gil / Democratic Party Leader Candidate : I will make the North Korea-U.S. summit a success and become the vanguard in transforming the Cold War issue on the Korean Peninsula.]
The remaining variables are the public opinion poll results, which account for 30%, and the votes of roughly 17,000 delegates.
Analysts suggest that second-place candidate Jung, who trails by 8.4 percentage points as of today, would need to lead by nearly 20 percentage points in the public opinion polls to pull off a reversal.
If the candidate in first place still falls short of a majority even after the total aggregation, the winner will be determined by recalculating the second-choice preferences of voters who cast their ballots for the third-place candidate.
The Democratic Party will hold its national convention in Daejeon tomorrow to announce the final results combining the delegate votes and public opinion poll outcomes.
(Photo courtesy of: Yonhap News)
(Reported by Lim Woo-shik, Kim Yong-woo | Video edited by Won Hyung-hee)
※
Copying, redistribution, and unauthorized use in AI training are strictly prohibited.