Kim Minseok Leads with 48.5% in Gangwon and TK... Chung Cheongrae at 44.4%

Kim Minseok, a candidate in the Democratic Party’s party leader election, took first place in the Gangwon and TK (Daegu and North Gyeongsang) regional primaries held on August 9 by defeating candidates Jeong Cheongrae and Song Younggil. Kim, who also came out on top in the Jeju and Incheon primaries the previous day, extended his lead by maintaining his position at the front in the second week of the regional primaries. However, in terms of cumulative vote share, Kim continued to hold a lead of less than 2 percentage points over Jeong.

The Democratic Party’s Central Election Commission held a joint candidate speech event in Gangwon, followed by another in Daegu, and then announced the results of the party member vote. When votes from Gangwon and Daegu were combined, Kim received 48.54% of the votes, leading Jeong, who garnered 44.40%, by 4.14 percentage points. Song recorded 7.06%.

Reflecting the results of the primaries held that day, the cumulative vote share was 46.01% for Kim and 44.53% for Jeong. While Kim is leading by 1.48 percentage points, the weight of the results from the South Gyeongsang region has not yet been factored in.

Democratic Party representative candidates Minseok Kim, Cheongrae Jeong, and Younggil Song hold hands and take a commemorative photo at the Democratic Party representative and supreme committee candidates’ joint speech event held at Hoengseong National Sports Center, Gangwon Province on August 9, 2026. Photo by nowwego@yna.co.kr (End)

In the first week of the regional primaries, Kim won in the Chungcheong region and Jeong prevailed in Busan, Ulsan, and South Gyeongsang, with each candidate claiming one victory.

This convention marks the first time the "one person, one vote" system is being applied. For the party head election, the weighting is 70% for delegates and dues-paying members, and 30% for the general public. Only the results of dues-paying party member votes are released in the regional primaries.

Online delegate voting is scheduled for August 17, and public opinion polling will take place from August 15 to 16. The final result of the Democratic Party leader election, including both delegate and public votes, will be announced at the national convention held in Daejeon on August 17.

The party leader primary is conducted under a ranked-choice voting system. If no candidate wins a majority, the second-choice votes of the voters who picked the lowest-placed candidate as their first choice will be redistributed between the top two candidates, and a majority winner is then declared elected.

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