[The Public – Reporter Kim Jong-yeon] In a recent poll gauging candidate suitability for the upcoming June 3 local elections, Seongdong District Mayor Jeong Won-oh has surged ahead of incumbent Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon by a double-digit margin. The Democratic Party of Korea also maintained an edge over the People Power Party in party support. President Lee Jae-myung’s approval rating exceeded 50%, reinforcing the narrative of strong public backing for his administration.
A survey conducted by JoWon C&I for Straight News on January 7-8, polling 806 Seoul residents aged 18 and older, revealed a hypothetical two-way race with Jeong garnering 47.5% support compared to Oh’s 33.3% – a substantial 14.2 percentage point gap.
This marks a widening divide from a previous poll conducted on January 24-25, where the difference stood at 10.2 percentage points (Jeong at 50.5%, Oh at 40.3%).
In a multi-candidate scenario, Jeong led with 28.4%, followed by Oh at 20.2%. Other contenders trailed: Na Kyung-won at 13.9%, Park Joo-min at 9.3%, Han Dong-hoon at 6.7%, Seo Young-kyo at 5.1%, Jeon Hyun-hee at 3.0%, Park Hong-geun at 1.3%, and Kim Young-bae at 0.8%.
Regionally, Jeong maintained a lead in most areas. However, in the traditionally conservative fourth region (comprising Seocho, Gangnam, Songpa, and Gangdong districts), the race tightened with Jeong at 25.4% and Oh at 25.3%, falling within the margin of error.
Party support figures showed the Democratic Party leading at 48.1%, with the People Power Party at 31.6% – a 16.5 percentage point advantage for the Democrats. Other parties registered lower: Justice Innovation Party at 2.0%, Progressive Party at 0.9%, Reform New Party at 2.8%, and other parties at 1.7%. Notably, 11.4% expressed no party preference, while 1.5% were undecided.
President Lee’s job approval stood at 58.5% positive and 35.9% negative. Even in the fourth region, including the affluent Gangnam area, positive ratings (54.1%) outpaced negative ones (40.1%) by over 10 percentage points.
When asked about the local election narrative, 49.5% supported “empowering the ruling party to assist governance,” while 39.2% favored “strengthening the opposition to check the administration.” This indicates a 10.3 percentage point lead for the pro-government stance.
The survey employed a mobile virtual number ARS method with proportional allocation sampling by gender, age, and region. With 806 respondents (out of 14,183 attempts, 5.7% response rate), the margin of error is ±3.5 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. For comprehensive details, refer to the Central Election Survey Deliberation Commission’s website.
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