Jung Cheongrae Tops Democratic Party BUK Member Vote, Recovers from Chungcheong Defeat

Leads by 2.8 Percentage Points with 46.65% of the Vote

In the Busan, Ulsan, and South Gyeongsang (collectively referred to as "BooUlGyeong") tour primary for the election of the Democratic Party leader, candidate Chung Cheongrae defeated candidate Kim Minseok to claim victory.

Democratic Party leader candidate Chung Cheong-rae is greeting party members at the joint speech meeting of the Democratic Party leader and Supreme Councilor tour primary election held at BEXCO in Busan on the 2nd. Photo by Yonhap News

On August 2, on the second day of the tour primaries, the Democratic Party held joint speeches in Ulsan, Busan, and Changwon, South Gyeongsang, after which it announced the results of the BooUlGyeong voting by party members with voting rights.

After tallying each candidate’s votes, Chung received 46.65% of the vote in BooUlGyeong, leading Kim, who garnered 43.85%, by a margin of 2.8 percentage points. Candidate Song Younggil received 9.5%. These figures do not include the weighted results from South Gyeongsang.

Previously, the Democratic Party designated South Gyeongsang, along with North Gyeongsang and Daegu, as strategic regions and decided to apply a 5% weighting to the votes from delegates and voting party members in these areas. This strategic region weighting will be reflected in the final tally of the August 17 party convention, following the completion of all tour primaries.

With the BooUlGyeong voting results on this day, Chung managed to rebound and build momentum, overcoming his narrow defeat in the first tour primary held in the Chungcheong region. The day before, in his home region of Chungcheong, Chung had lost to Kim by 0.44 percentage points in the voting.

For this convention, which is the first to adopt a one-person-one-vote system, the leadership election will reflect 70% of the vote from delegates and voting party members, and 30% from the public. Across the regional tour primaries, only the results of the voting party members are released.

The results from the delegate vote (online voting on the 17th) and the public opinion poll (conducted August 15–16), which exclude party member voting, will be announced at the party convention to be held in Daejeon on the 17th, after the completion of all regional tour primaries.

The party leader race is conducted using a preferential voting system. If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the overall count, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated, and the second-preference votes of those who selected that candidate are then redistributed between the top two candidates to determine the final winner.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.