hankyoreh

Jung Chung-rae, the leader of the Democratic Party, and Jang Dong-hyuk, the leader of the People Power Party. (Yonhap)

Over half of Korean voters believe that the ruling party bloc should win in the upcoming local elections on June 3 for the sake of stable governance, a new poll has found. 
 
According to a voter panel survey commissioned by the Hankyoreh and the Korean Association of Party Studies, 53.3% respondents said that many candidates from the liberal ruling bloc should be elected in the upcoming election.

That compares to only 34.1% of respondents who reported wanting to see the opposition conservative bloc win and keep the administration in check, making for a margin of 19.2 points. 
 
The survey was conducted May 6-10 with 1,701 respondents, 9.8% of whom stated that they did not have a strong opinion. The survey was conducted in part to commemorate the Hankyoreh’s 38th anniversary on Friday.
 
Support for the Democratic Party of Korea (48.9%) far surpassed that for the People Power Party (23.8%). Particularly notable is the Democratic Party’s 40.2% approval rating in the traditionally conservative Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province areas, besting the PPP, which trailed behind at 30.1%.
 
When asked which party’s candidate they would vote for in the mayoral or gubernatorial races in their own district, 51.3% respondents stated they would pick the Democratic Party candidate, more than double that of those who said they would vote for the PPP candidate (23.7%) — a gap of 27.6 points. 
 
That made for a wider gap between support for the ruling party and opposition party in terms of voting intentions for local government heads than in the previous wave of the survey, which was conducted Dec. 17-21, 2025. 

In the third wave, there was a 19.7 percentage point difference between the two parties, with 46.7% respondents saying they would vote for the Democratic Party and 27.0% for the PPP.

Democratic Party leader Jung Chung-rae holds a press conference at the National Assembly on May 13, 2026. (Yoon Woon-sik/Hankyoreh); People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyuk speaks at the launch of an election task force at the party’s headquarters in Yeouido. (pool photo)

 
When asked to project who they thought would win the election, regardless of their own preference for a certain party, 65.4% respondents estimated that Democratic Party candidates would emerge victorious, three times the percentage of those who predicted that PPP candidates would win (19.0%).
 
These results seem to reflect the high approval rating enjoyed by President Lee Jae Myung. When asked if they believed that Lee was adequately fulfilling his duties as president, 66.9% respondents said that they thought he was doing a good job, more than twice the rate of those who stated that he was doing a poor job (28.7%).
 
Of those surveyed, 71.5% stated that they would definitely vote in the June 3 local elections, while 18.8% stated that they would make the effort to vote.

By Ko Han-sol, staff reporter

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