Exit polls in South Korea election show landslide victory for left-wing leader Lee Jae Myung

Liberal frontrunner Lee Jae Myung is poised to become the next South Korean president, exit polls showed, after voters turned out in huge numbers to cast their ballots after months of political turmoil.

The country was forced to conduct a snap election after former president Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached for attempting to impose martial law last December.

South Koreans have responded to that crisis by voting in the leader of the opposition Democratic Party Mr Lee, 61, who campaigned on a message of major changes to the political system abused by Mr Yoon’s conservative People Power Party.

About 34.5 million people, or around 78 per cent of the electorate, voted across 14,295 locations, according to the latest National Election Commission figures as polls closed. That would make it the highest turnout in a South Korean presidential election since 1997.

Polls closed at 8pm, with exit polls giving Mr Lee 51.7 per cent of the vote compared to 39.3 per cent for conservative candidate Kim Moon Soo, a gap of more than 12 percentage points, according to broadcaster SBS. The third contender, Lee Jun-seok of the minor New Reform Party, was forecast to receive 7.7 per cent votes.

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Responding to the exit polls, the Democratic Party said the people of South Korea had “made fiery judgment against the insurrection regime”, while Conservative Party campaign co-chair Na Kyung Won said he was “shocked” by the result.

The joint exit polls were based on surveys of about 100,000 voters at 325 polling stations nationwide and supplemented by a phone survey of 15,000 voters, according to The Korea Herald.

Exit polls in South Korea have a good track record. During the 2022 election, they predicted a tight race in which Mr Yoon had defeated Mr Lee by 0.6 percentage points, which was almost exactly correct.

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The snap election was called in April after the Constitutional Court ousted Mr Yoon as president earlier this year for imposing martial law. Mr Yoon had been impeached by the National Assembly and the court upheld the parliamentary decision. He is also facing a criminal trial for insurrection.

Mr Lee’s position as favourite has held firm since the beginning of the election campaign on 12 May – at one point he enjoyed a more than 20 percentage point lead in polls.

After losing narrowly to Mr Yoon in the 2022 election, he survived an assassination attempt during a visit to a construction site on Gadeok Island in Busan when he was stabbed in the neck in 2024.

Known for being outspoken and positioning himself as anti-elitist, Mr Lee is hailed by his supporters as a working-class hero with his promises to make a "real Republic of Korea" with jobs and a fair society.

He has advocated for using fiscal policy to support the economy and bringing to justice anyone involved in Mr Yoon's botched attempt to declare martial law.

Mr Lee had called the snap election "judgment day" against his rival Mr Kim and the People Power Party, accusing them of having condoned Mr Yoon’s martial law attempt. The Democratic Party candidate has urged voters to rally behind his campaign theme of “overcoming insurrection".

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In his final campaign speech, Mr Lee called Yeouido in Seoul a “historic site where the darkness of insurrection was driven out by the light of democracy".

“We will complete the revolution of light that began here in Yeouido," he was quoted as saying by The Chosun Daily.

Mr Kim had denounced his rival as a "dictator" and his Democratic Party as a "monster", warning that if the former human rights lawyer became president, he and his party would be left unconstrained to amend any laws they simply did not like.

The conservative nominee had claimed he would “never deceive the people or mislead them with lies”. He pledged to revive the economy and create “a great Republic of Korea where integrity prevails, corruption is eradicated, and hardworking citizens are respected".

Mr Lee will assume office immediately, likely on Wednesday, bypassing the customary 60-day transition period.