South Korea parliamentary election, 2016

[maxque]

Apr 13, 2016 22:10:48 GMT @odo said:

Final result:

Minjoo 123
Saenuri 122
Peoples 38
Justice 6
Indies 11

Only the second time since the return of Democracy that the main Conservative party isn't the largest party.

[Deleted]

Minjoo finished third on the list vote

Saneuri 33.5%
Peoples 26.7%
Minjoo 25.5%
Justice 7.2%
Others 7.0%

[Deleted]

There were five seats won by less than 300 votes.

In Incheon Minjoo won a seat over Saenuri with 214, and Saenuri won one over People's with 26. The latter swung back and forth numerous times and I am sure People's will want a recount of it.

In Gyenonggi Minjoo won a seat with 249 over Saenuri.

In Gangwon Saenuri won a seat with 134 over Minjoo.

And in Norrth Jeolla Saenuri won one over Minjoo with 111 (the only one they got in the region).

So Saenuri got the three narrowest wins and are presumably most likely to lose seats on the recounts. There were a couple of wins in the 300-500 bracket, but I doubt they will be recounted.

[Deleted]

[Deleted]

More detailed map on AH.com by poster Uhura's Mazda.

www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/attachment.php?attachmentid=273541&d=1460613514

[Georg Ebner]

Thank You for Your committed coverage, "odo"!

[Deleted]

Strong critique of floor leader Won Yoo-chul - a key pro-Park figure and central in the fierce infighting over nominations - being chosen as Saenuri interim leader until its convention in May. But it looks like the pro-Park faction keeps control, so far, despite their electoral setback.

Saenuri is trying to lure back deselected candidates, who quit the party over lopsided nominations that favored Park loyalists and won as Indies. Seven of the eleven newly elected Indies are ex-Saenuri. Won announced yesterday that the Indies will allowed to rejoin in order to surpass Mnjoo as the largest party and get to nominate the Speaker (not elected by a majority, but chosen by the #1 party). MPs Yoo Seong-min, Yoon Sang-hyun and Ahn Sang-soo have declared they are willing to rejoin the party, while the other four are "considering". So they have minimum 125, unless they lose some recounts.

[Deleted]

To sum up: Saenuri lost because they only managed to get 35 of 122 seats in Seoul, but they also lost 17 seats in their base in their eastern heartland in Daegu, Busan and the two Gyeongsang provinces, which is unprecendent and is either a fluke or the start of a less extremely regionalized and more "normal" voting pattern. Saenuri also managed to get two seats in Honam. So while the capital region as usual was the swing area and swung against the incumbents there were some liberal inroads in the East and a few conservative in the SW.

Their chairman has stepped down and two other potential presidential candidates former Seoul mayor Oh Se-hoon and ex-North Gyeongsang governor Kim Moon-soo lost and are thereby out of the race. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is said to be the only credible Saenuri bid at the moment - if they can talk him into running, still a big if.

Political science professor at Myongji University Kim Hyung-joon:

"The nomination row was just a trigger effect. It was a judgment on the Park government that failed to resolve economic issues like the high unemployment rate and widened income gap."

"Unless Park and the ruling party change their high-handed and unilateral way of handling state affairs, the prospect is slim that it could retain the presidency."

[Georg Ebner]

But isn't such a result quite the best for the GoverningParty concerning the coming PresidentialElection? Especially, if the opposition remains divided?

[Deleted]

Apr 16, 2016 8:42:36 GMT Georg Ebner said:

But isn't such a result quite the best for the GoverningParty concerning the coming PresidentialElection? Especially, if the opposition remains divided?

They are deeply divided themselves after fierce factional struggles up to the nomination. Two of their most credible presidential candidates lost their seats, and their chairman, who was another decent possibility, had to step down due to being undermined internally. The party remains in the hands of the unpopular pro-Park faction, which doesn't have a credible presidential contender, but seems determined to cling to power and control the so-called reconstruction process.

The Liberal split actually makes it possible they could end up third if the People's Party continue to grow as a centrist alternative (remember that People's finished ahead of Minjoo on the list vote) and Saenuri remain a mess. This time the Liberals cut into Saenuri's eastern strongholds and if they cannot run up huge margins in the east they could drop below both Minjoo and People's in a high turnout election, which benefits the Liberals. Early voting was a new thing in this election and once its better known turnout will likely increase, it already picked up a bit this time.

Unless they manage to draft Ban Ki-moon Saenuri are in deep trouble. If they do that will be a game changer, but the question is if he wants to given the state of the party and how merciless South Korean politics is - and the fact that he will turn 72 in June. 

[Deleted]

If we use the list vote as a baseline you got:

Saneuri 33.5%
Peoples 26.7%
Minjoo 25.5%
Justice 7.2%
Christian Liberal Party 2.6% (Christian Right)
Minjoo breakaway 0.9%
Others 3.4 (mostly leftists)

(adds up to 99.8% due to some rounding errors)

The Justice Party withdrew their candidate last time and are unlikely to run as it would only risk blocking Minjoo. You then have:

Minjoo + c. 10% leftists/Greens + c. 1% Liberal dissidents = 36.5
Saenuri + CLP 36.1
Peoples 26.7


On a high turnout that might have been:

Saenuri + CLP 34.3
Minjoo & left 38.0
Peoples 28.0

If Peoples gain a little above 3% on Saenuri they are in second. Run a bad candidate after a lame duck period with continued high unemployment and that is not an impossible scenario. If the Christian "Liberal" Party decides to run a candidate (and as an Islamophobic party in a country with hardly any Muslims + staunch homophobes and general nutters linked to Christian fundamentalism that is far from unlikely), this could be achieved on less. 

Lets say Saenuri vote without CLP, but adjusted for high turnout is 31 and Peoples 28, then you only need to move 1.5%. 

[Deleted]

Saenuri keeps sliding and Minjoo gaining in first post election poll (conducted last week, so includes some pre-election answers). President Park reaches now low in approval rating and drops the most among the Saenuri core electorate (60+ in North Gyeongsang and Daegu).

[Deleted]

Saenuri:


Minjoo:


People's:


Justice:

[Deleted]

The South Korean Conservatives are under pressure from several factors:

The people from the SW part of the country (the two Jeolla provinces and Gwangju city) have been regarded as backwards and inferior by especially Koreans in the east, but also in the capital region (though this prejudice is nowadays very limited in Seoul city proper). The Honam population played a vital part in the opposition to the military dictatorship, and has formed the core of the Liberal vote ever since, but have often felt they are taking for granted by the Liberals and wanted a more pragmatic approach to cooperation with Conservatives in order to speed up regional development, and they are not particularly ideologically leftist. The anti-Honam bigotry has been a key factor allowing the Conservatives to run up big margins in the east giving a highly regionally divided electorate with the capital region as the only real swing area.

This has changed with the arrival of the new People's Party, which developed as a personal vehicle for its (Busan born) leader Ahn, but co-opted Honam regionalism and combined it with a centrist populism which appeals to a broad middle class segment not attracted to Minjoo's traditional pitch of "economy democracy" (which in Korean political lingo means a fairer distribution of wealth and less power to the all dominant conglomerates). People's have damaged Saenuri both by taking moderate swing voters and by removing the stigma of being "the Honam party" from Minjoo, which has made it possible for bigoted, but economically leftist voters in the rest of the country to vote for Minjoo (this could to some degree be compared to the US Democrats losing the black vote thus making it possible for poor bigoted whites to vote for them). 

The South Korean labour market is sharply divided between insiders with high job security (mainly at the big conglomerates) and those hired on temporary contracts with precarious low paid work with the insiders forming a core Conservative constituency, especially in the east. Rising unemployment and - more importantly - underemployment means that ever more people find themselves in the latter group, incl. those from Conservative families and regions. 

The Park administration is closely linked to the conglomerates and have aimed to implement labour market reforms making the extremely inflexible Korean labour market more flexible to improve competitiveness. The problem seen from a Saenuri point of view is that since workers with high job security make up a big part of the Conservative core voters, while people on temporary contracts are either apolitical or Liberal/leftist, labour reforms (and the prospect of them) undermine Saenuri's electoral basis. Young people from a Conservative background, but stuck in temporary low paid jobs increasingly abandon the party. Combined with the loss of the Honam bigotry effect and the rise of the People's Party as a centrist alternative this could make South Korean politics much less regionalist and more ideological, and the ideologically Conservative vote is only around 30%, and lower among younger voters. 

While the South Korean political system is to a large extent copied from the American with an executive presidency elected in one round, and nowadays based on primaries, and such systems tend to create two party systems a more permanent three party system can not be ruled out. Alternatively the Conservative vote could gradually erode and Minjoo and People's evolve as the two big parties with Saenuri being marginalized outside of it's eastern strongholds. The next presidential election will be crucial. Saenuri needs to finish in the top two and stabilize their vote. With growing inequality, ever less job security and diminished returns on the anti-Honam bigotry they are unde pressure and can ill afford the internecine feuding which - in typical South Korean fashion - dominates the party at the moment.

[Deleted]

The list vote for the small parties:

Miscellanous, many religious:

Christian Liberal Party 626,853 2.63% (seems its actually "liberty" in Korean, which makes more sense for a Christian Right party)

Democratic Party 209,872 0.88%
Christian Democratic Union 129,978 0.54%
Grand National Party (GNP) 86,464 0.36%
Green Buddhist United Party 31,141 0.13%
Let's Go Korea 27,103 0.11%
Japanese comfort women's group for human rights and justice 25,227 0.10%
Unified Creativity 16,427 0.06%
Korea National Party 16,407 0.06%
Republican Party 12,295 0.05%
Employment, Welfare, Increased pension age 12,143 0.05%
National Reform Party 11,981 0.05%
Holy Buddhist Unification 9,710 0.04%


Leftists:

Greens 182,301 0.76%
People's United Party 145,624 0.61%
Labour 91,705 0.38%
Welfare State Party 20,267 0.08%

[Deleted]

Women won 26 of 253 constituency seats = 10.27%. This paltry result is actually the highest ever and a 2.55% increase from 7.72% last time. If you add the 25 women elected by proportional representation its equivalent to 51 out of 300 = 17%. For the outgoing National Assembly it was 14.7%.

The highest proportion of women per party was 50% for Justice (3 out of 6). Saenuri elected 12.3% women, Minjoo 19.5% and the People's Party 23.7%.