Candidates aim to win ‘midfield’ battle

Park Geun-hye, left, candidate of the conservative ruling party, Saenuri, samples dried fish at a market in Inje, Gangwon Province, Sunday, while her opposition challenger Moon Jae-in of the Democratic United Party was out courting his supporters, hours later in front of a department store in Incheon. / Yonhap

Conservative Park continues to lead, but Moon hangs within striking distance

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Korea probably won’t see its version of Nate Silver in this presidential election and maybe not in the next.

The idea of a poker player-turned-political forecaster winning fame after predicting the election with guided missile-like accuracy is simply too far-fetched in Korea, where the depth in sophisticated data is shallower than a puddle in the Sahara. The quality of publically-available statistics here is barely enough to support fantasy baseball leagues, let alone in-depth political analysis.

Nonetheless, research firms are continuing to invest Herculean effort to advance their statistics and minimize guesswork in their process of predicting the outcome of the Dec. 19 vote. While they aren’t promising to nail the numbers from each voting region with “Silverian” accuracy, they vow to provide something significantly better than broad-brush punditry.

The presidential race has boiled down to a showdown between conservative ruling party candidate Park Geun-hye and opposition challenger Moon Jae-in, with apologies to leftist minnow Lee Jung-hee who appeared with the two in today’s presidential debate.

Recent surveys from research firms Gallup Korea, Korea Social Opinion Institute (KSOI) and Realmeter indicate that the election is still Park’s to lose.

However, the Saenuri Party candidate can’t afford to rest on her laurels when the departure of independent candidate Ahn Cheol-soo has made the outcome unpredictable.

Ahn withdrew from the presidential race last month after his talks to merge candidacies with Moon of the Democratic United Party (DUP) ultimately fell through. Moon still believes he can lure enough of Ahn’s disgruntled supporters to have a puncher’s chance against Park.

The tricky part is that Ahn’s reputation as a successful businessman has made him popular with conservative voters as well as liberals. Recent polls show that Moon is absorbing just about half of Ahn’s support. About 25 percent of Ahn supporters prefer Park over Moon, while the rest remain undecided.

During their talks to merge candidacies, Moon and Ahn frequently saw face-to-face but never eye-to-eye as they consistently quarreled about the method to select the single candidate between them.

The ill-tempered negotiations had liberal voters concerned about the chemistry between the two and all but assured that the union, or whatever it could be called, would be less than the sum of its parts.

Ahn broke out of his mini-hiatus Monday in appearing at the disbanding of his presidential camp. He did endorse Moon over Park, but his support couldn’t have been more lukewarm.

The latest survey by KSOI, conducted on some 1,000 adults nationwide, has Park leading Moon by 44.9 percent to 40.9 percent. However, the support swings to Moon’s favor — by 47.7 percent to 43.1 percent — when respondents were asked to think hypothetically about Ahn supporting Moon’s bid.

Gallup Korea’s numbers indicate a narrower edge between Park and Moon, with the conservative candidate leading 45 percent to 43 percent, a difference within the survey’s 2.5 point margin of error.

However, the poll may have missed a portion of Park’s older supporters as it was conducted entirely via mobile phones. Moon holds a comfortable lead over Park in support among under-40 voters. Park’s edge among over-50 voters, however, is even more profound.

“The current conditions aren’t great for us but they aren’t so bad either. Incheon, Gangwon Province and the two Chungcheong Provinces are always unpredictable, but we believe we have a better shot at in these areas than five years ago, thanks to Ahn and other factors. We seem to have a better shot at the traditional Saenuri Party strong points of Busan and South Gyeongsang Province as well,” said Woo Sang-ho, Moon’s spokesman.

“There have been expectations that we will be trailing Park by around 8 percentage points after Ahn withdrew from the race, but the gap is now 4 to 5 points. I think that is more than coverable considering the time left. We haven’t received a real boost from Ahn since his departure, but a late-game push could work even better for us. Our plan is to narrow the gap by 0.5 to 1 percentage points at a time.”

The DUP targets 93 percent-plus support in the southwestern areas of North and South Jeolla Province, about 50 percent in the central regions of North and South Chungcheong Province, 55 percent in Gangwon Province and 45 percent in Busan.

The Saenuri Party isn’t as desperate to provide predictions fixed down to the single digits. It nonetheless expects to dominate in the broader southeastern region of Daegu, Busan and North and South Gyeongsang Provinces and also prevail in the Seoul metropolitan area and the swing regions of North and South Chungcheong Provinces, Gangwon Province and Incheon.

Massiveness of the Seoul metropolitan area

A forecast of any election has to start with the Seoul metropolitan area, simply because the capital city, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon are home to more than 49 percent of the country’s 40 million-plus voters.

And the Seoul metropolitan area is one area where Moon is expressing confidence and Park apprehension. The DUP won 65 parliamentary seats in this region in April’s general election compared to Saenuri Party’s 43.

While Park’s campaign strategists admit that Seoul metropolitan area will be a tough battlefield, they aren’t ready to say they represent the underdog either. Ahn’s departure from the race appears to be benefiting Park more than Moon in this region, they say.

Recent surveys show the competition between Park and Moon in the Seoul metropolitan area on a knife edge. Gallup Korea has Park leading Moon by 45 percent to 43 percent in Seoul, but the candidates are dead even at 44 percent in Gyeonggi Province and Incheon. The latest survey by Realmeter even has Park leading Moon 44.7 percent to 43.6 percent in Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon.

“While our support is weak in the western part of Gyeonggi Province, we have the lead in the eastern side. The competition is close in the northern and southern parts of Gyeonggi, but we have more room for growth. We are catching up quickly in the Seoul regions where we have been trailing,” said Koh Hee-sun, Saenuri Party lawmaker and one of Park’s senior strategists.

“The eventually goal is garnering 52 percent support in the Seoul metropolitan area. While we aren’t hitting that mark now, we still think that level is achievable.”

Park so far has been putting more time and effort to her campaigning in the Seoul metropolitan area than in any other voting region, touring the Gyeonggi Province cities of Pyeongtaek, Osan and Suwon last Wednesday and Seoul and Incheon the next day.

It was Moon who was wooing voters in Seoul and Incheon on Monday, talking up his plans for improving the living standards of working-class Koreans and helping small-and-medium-sized enterprises.

Will the central region be decisive?

While the central regions of North and South Chungcheong Province is represented by just around 4 million voters, their presence feels a lot larger than that. Support for Park and Moon in this region has been swinging wildly since the departure of Ahn and each of the camps believe they have a realistic shot at winning the lion’s share of ballots.

The region also appears to hold sentimental value to the candidates and their parties. Hardly a day goes without the spokesmen from the Saenuri Party and DUP mentioning that the winners of the Chungcheong fight ended up unpacking his boxes at Cheong Wa Dae in both the 2002 and 2007 elections.

Desperation to massage voters in the central region is reflected by the race between Park and Moon to announce regional development projects, most of them tailored around Sejong City, a planned city conceived as the country’s new administrative capital.

Surveys show Park holding a sizable lead over Moon among Chungcheong voters. But she can’t get comfortable as the proportion of undecided voters appears to be larger than most regions.

The Gallup Korea survey has Park garnering 46 percent support across Daejeon, Sejoing City and North and South Chungcheong Provinces, with Moon managing just 41 percent. However, 11 percent of the respondents said they were undecided. In the company’s previous polls about a hypothetical three-way race between Park, Moon and Ahn, the support for the independent candidate had been measured at over 20 percent.

“In the central region, Park is leading Moon by double digits. However, our goal is to garner about 60 percent of support and gain a 20 percent cushion over Moon here,” said Chung Woo-taik, a veteran Saenuri Party lawmaker and one of its chief strategist for the North Chungcheong region.

The competition in Busan and South Gyeongsang Province cities may also prove as decisive. While the conservatives have traditionally prevailed in these areas, the DUP is inspired by the level of support Moon has been generating there. It helps that Busan is the hometown of Moon and also his political mentor Roh Moo-hyun, the late president who has been lionized by liberal voters since he leaped to his death in 2009. Ahn’s popularity was also strong in this region, which Moon’s camp sees as an opportunity.

“Ahn’s supporters are emotionally intense right now, but we believe they will make their decision as days go by and polling day looms. We are confident about absorbing the votes that would have went to Ahn and this is why Busan and South Gyeongsang Province are so strategically important to us,” DUP’s Woo said.

Gallup Korea has Park leading Moon by 53 percent to 35 percent across Busan, Ulsan and South Gyeongsang Province. The proportion of undecided voters was measured at 11 percent.

The dreaded Ahn question

It is just over a week since Ahn tearfully withdrew from the race after the talks to with Moon ultimately fell through. However, it seems almost as if he never left because the public’s unwavering support for the computer software guru and former Seoul University professor means that neither Park nor Moon is in full control of their destiny yet.

Ahn’s half-hearted support of Moon seems to indicate that he has concluded it’s better for his personal interest to weather the election unscathed and debut his own political party around the by-elections next April.

Ahn also enjoyed strong support from voters in their 20s and 30s, many of whom who are now disillusioned and may not bother to go to the ballot boxes, pollsters say. Moon’s campaign strategists are concerned that a less-than-expected participation from younger voters would hurt his chances on polling day.

Realmeter had expected voter participation to inch over 70 percent in this presidential election, but recently adjusted its forecast to 65 to 68 percent.

Gallup Korea measures Moon’s support at 55 percent to Park’s 29 percent among people between the ages of 19 and 29. Moon also has the backing of 57 percent of the people in their 30s compared to Park’s 28 percent.

However, Park holds a 47 percent to 41 percent edge over Moon among voters in their 40s. Park’s support grows to 57 percent among voters in their 50s and 69 percent among voters over the age of 60. <The Korea Times/Kim Tong-hyung>