South Koreans head to the polls to pick a new president on Tuesday, with the liberal front-runner, Lee Jae-myung, projected to sail to victory — a win that could shake up ties with Japan and the United States and kick-start dialogue with nuclear-armed North Korea.
Barring an unforeseen development, a Lee victory seems all but certain. The Democratic Party (DP) candidate, who lost by a razor-thin margin to Yoon Suk Yeol in the 2022 election, held a commanding lead in final opinion polling, with 49% support against 35% for his closest rival, Kim Moon-soo of the People Power Party, a Gallup Korea survey showed last Tuesday.
While Kim has eroded a more than 20 percentage point gap with Lee at the start of the campaign on May 12, he failed to convince another candidate, the Reform Party's Lee Jun-seok, to drop out and back him to avoid splitting the conservative vote.
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