Election Promise Awareness Is Lacking

Although candidates for the May 31 local elections have started to register their candidacies, it is reported that voters still do not know the candidates in their voting districts. Moreover, it was found that most voters have never heard about the election promises of candidates, even though political parties are pursuing “policy-based elections.”

Ipsos Korea, a polling agency, found in its telephone survey of 989 voters over the age of 19 nationwide from May 11 to 13 that eight out of 10 surveyed were unaware of the candidates’ promises (margin of error ±3.1 percent).

Sixty-six percent of the respondents also said that they knew some of the candidates for upper level government elections (40 percent) in their electoral districts while 26 percent of respondents answered that they knew no candidate in their districts. A whopping 44 percent of voters replied they did not know any candidate for the lower level government elections in their area.

Sixty-three percent of the voters surveyed answered they would vote no matter what, while only 43 percent of voters in their 20s and younger said they would, which is half the proportion of voters in their 60s and older who said they would definitely vote (86 percent).

According to the survey results, the proportion of voters who have yet to decide which candidates to vote for in the upper level and lower level government elections were 38 percent and 27 percent, respectively.

As for the upper level government elections, 56 percent of Grand National Party supporters answered that they made their mind on whom to vote for, while only 38 percent of Uri Party supporters said they did. Similarly, more GNP supporters (41 percent) said they chose whom to vote for in the lower level government elections than the ruling party supporters (26 percent).

sunny60@donga.com