Power of Opinion Poll

An opinion poll of 5,490 people from the general public has decided the outcome of the GNP presidential primary, in which former Seoul mayor Lee Myung-bak defeated Chairwoman Park Geun-hye by a small margin.

Lee, who earned 64,216 votes on Sunday from a ballot of delegates whose votes accounted for 80 percent of the total score, was behind Park by 432 votes or 0.4 percentage point.

However, Lee was able to win the nomination race by receiving 51.5 percentage points or 8.8 more percentage points than Park in a survey of ordinary citizens carried out simultaneously with the ballot.

Although the number of votes allocated in the opinion poll was the same as that of the delegates (45,108), 32,771 votes were reflected by multiplying by the voter turnout (70.8 percent). Each candidate shared the votes in accordance with their approval ratings in the poll.

The opinion poll was also critical in the GNP Seoul mayoral candidate nomination race held on April 25, 2006. Candidate Oh Se-hoon received only 1,343 votes while his rival candidate Maeng Hyung-kyu earned 1,443 from a ballot of delegates. However, Oh beat Maeng with a margin of 361 votes by garnering 624 votes while Maeng received only 163 votes in the opinion poll which accounted 20 percent of the total votes.

ddr@donga.com