hankyoreh

By Jungsoo Jang

Former Gyeonggi Governer Sohn Hak-gyu won the second round of mobile voting in the government-affiliated United New Democratic Party’s primary yesterday. In the run-up to the conclusion of the party primary on Sunday, Sohn has achieved his second win in the mobile voting round, but is still behind Chung Dong-young in the overall count. Former Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan was third in the overall tally.

In the second round of mobile voting, in which citizens have been invited to use their mobile phones to cast their votes, Sohn garnered 21,359 votes of the total 56,211, accounting for 38.4 percent of the total, while Chung received 19,288 votes, or 34.6 percent, and Lee, 15,036 votes, or 27 percent.

Voter turnout stood at 74.9 percent, 4.3 percentage points higher than that of the previous round of mobile voting, giving a boost to the UNDP’s campaign, which has been plagued by low popularity and internal division.

In particular, Sohn’s camp appears to be buoyed by his two consecutive wins. One aide to Sohn, who asked that his name be withheld, said that victory was in the wind. “We will finally win,” he said.

Analysts predict that Sohn’s win in the mobile voting will re-energize Sohn’s campaign as well as provide an impetus to restart his campaign, which has been lackluster since the primary began a month ago.

In the meantime, Chung’s camp downplayed its candidate’s defeat in the mobile vote. An aide to Chung said that Chung will win in the one-off vote scheduled for October 14 by a big margin and that he will win in the overall tally.

The three rounds of mobile voting represent just one part of the UNDP primary, which also includes voting by the electoral college. The primary was to have been carried out in 15 regions around the country, but was stopped mid-way by speculation over illegal voter registration conducted by one or more of the candidates, and has since been replaced with a single round of voting slated for Sunday. The winner of the primary will go on to face the conservative Grand National Party’s Lee Myung-bak, who has thus far lead the polls by a wide margin.

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