[Changing Korean Voters] Short Interview with the Author: ⑦ A Disliked Presidential Election, What Choices Did Supporters of Major Parties Make?

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1FC0I9cvaM

The East Asia Institute (EAI) is operating the project <Changing Korean Voters>, which researches the 20th presidential election and reform agendas in Korean politics, based on a presidential panel survey conducted with Korea Research. Following the release of special reports by the research team confirming the current state of public sentiment, we are releasing short interview videos with the authors to present key points for observing the trends in public sentiment revealed by this election.

■ Author: Gil Jeong-ah_Research Professor, Institute for Government Studies, Korea University. She lectures on voter political attitudes, Korean politics, and quantitative analysis. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Seoul National University and her primary research interests include voter political attitudes, partisan polarization, and the political accountability of representative democracy. She has published articles in numerous journals, including Social Science Research, Korean Political Science Review, Korean Association of Party Studies Review, and Legislative Research.

■ Contact and Editing: Jeon Ju-hyun _EAI Researcher

Contact: 02 2277 1683 (ext. 204) | jhjun@eai.or.kr

Video Transcript

In this 20th presidential election, I focused on the partisan dynamics of voters and, in particular, their attitudes toward polarization, which is closely related to the former. During the process of the 20th election, numerous suspicions arose regarding the two major candidates, leading domestic media to attach descriptors such as a "disliked election" and "election of lesser evils." This caused voters to agonize over whom to vote for. However, a notable fact is that despite the generally negative evaluations of both candidates, a high voter turnout of 77.2% was recorded. Furthermore, the vote share was very close, with candidate Yoon Suk-yeol receiving 48.5% and candidate Lee Jae-myung receiving 47.8%.

Given this high voter turnout and the fact that these two candidates secured a combined 96.39% of the vote, despite voters disliking both major candidates, I wondered if all voters truly perceived this election as the most disliked election, and if this election was uniquely characterized by the principle of choosing the lesser evil. Therefore, while analyzing the survey data, I focused on the differences observed among supporters of the two major parties.

First, looking at all voters, we confirmed that generally negative attitudes were formed towards both parties and both candidates. The proportion of respondents who answered that they disliked both parties the most exceeded 10%, and the proportion who answered they disliked both candidates the most even exceeded 25%. This indicates a high level of dislike towards both parties. However, when we segmented this by the respondent's party affiliation, we found that supporters showed very high favorability towards their own party and candidate, while exhibiting very high dislike towards the opposing party and candidate.

This implies that the observed high levels of dislike, when viewed on average, are primarily driven by supporters of each respective party, and that supporters still hold firm preferences for their own party and candidate. Therefore, the statement that "both candidates are disliked" should realistically only apply to independents or supporters of third parties. Voters with clear preferences for one of the two major parties still showed high levels of favorability, and the election proceeded based on these positive attitudes, even amidst allegations and negative evaluations of both candidates. However, when viewed without segmentation by party preference, the high favorability and high dislike offset each other, superficially appearing as similar levels of dislike between the parties and candidates.

Next, we examined the relationship between these favorability ratings and respondents' satisfaction with democracy. The analysis showed a pattern where the proportion of respondents selecting the midpoint (5 on a 7-point scale) was the highest, and the proportion gradually decreased towards the extremes of dissatisfaction and satisfaction. We could also confirm that more respondents leaned towards dissatisfaction rather than satisfaction. This overall pattern appeared similarly across different party preferences.

However, when we examined the relationship between party preference and satisfaction with democracy among supporters of major parties, a different pattern emerged. Those who expressed satisfaction with democracy generally scored 5.2 or higher. Among these, while Democratic Party supporters showed high satisfaction with democracy along with strong favorability towards the Democratic Party, People Power Party supporters exhibited high satisfaction with democracy coupled with strong dislike towards the Democratic Party.

This pattern is precisely reversed when examined in relation to favorability towards the People Power Party. Supporters of the People Power Party showed satisfaction with democracy along with high favorability towards the People Power Party, while supporters of the Democratic Party showed satisfaction with democracy along with strong dislike towards the People Power Party. When examining the favorability towards both candidates, these opposing patterns were repeated exactly. Therefore, while voters do not show significant differences in their satisfaction with democracy in South Korea, they exhibit opposing views regarding democracy itself.

In summary, the seemingly uniform satisfaction with democracy masks a divergence between strong positive sentiment towards one's own party and strong negative sentiment towards the opposing party. These findings suggest that the perception of dislike is not merely a general sentiment but rather a reflection of voters disliking the opposing party, with their own party being viewed favorably. This indicates the presence of affective polarization, characterized by the difference between positive emotions towards one's own party and negative emotions towards the opposing party.