[General Election Poll Verification - Gongju, Buyeo, Cheongyang] All Four April Polls Show Park Suhyun in First Place... Winner is Jeong Jinseok

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Jin-young] Various opinion polls conducted to gauge regional public sentiment ahead of the general election have been mired in controversy. The core of the debate was that opinion polls failed to accurately capture public sentiment and instead distorted public opinion. Asia Economy is publishing a series verifying how accurate opinion polls were, focusing on constituencies where many polls were conducted.

The general election results in Chungnam Gongju·Buyeo·Cheongyang, where Park Su-hyun, former Blue House spokesperson under the Moon Jae-in administration and candidate for the Democratic Party of Korea, and Jeong Jin-seok, former floor leader of the main opposition party United Future Party, had a 'rematch,' came out completely differently from the opinion polls.

Since the official campaign period began on the 2nd of last month, all four opinion polls conducted by media outlets showed Park leading, but when the actual ballot boxes were opened, Park received 54,863 votes (46.4%) and Jeong received 57,487 votes (48.6%).

Jeong, who won the 20th general election by a margin of 3.1 percentage points, narrowly won this time by 2.2 percentage points.

Opinion polls had shown Park, who was seeking revenge for his previous defeat, slightly ahead of Jeong, who was running for his fifth term.

Among the four opinion polls conducted since the 2nd of last month, three showed Park leading within the margin of error.

The opinion poll conducted by Munhwa Ilbo through Embrain Public on the 7th-8th of last month showed Park leading Jeong beyond the margin of error (±4.4 percentage points). (For detailed information, refer to the Central Election Poll Deliberation Commission website.)

The gap between the two candidates was 9.2 percentage points, slightly exceeding the margin of error.

Park's support rates in the four polls ranged from 43.7% to 44.8%, showing little variation.

Even with the proportion of landline calls varying between 10% and 40%, Park's support rate remained largely unchanged.

The difference between Park's support rates in the four polls and his actual vote share (46.4%) was only between -2.7 and -1.6 percentage points.

The opinion polls accurately predicted Park's support rate.

However, all four polls showed a significant gap compared to Jeong's actual vote share.

The difference between the polls and Jeong's actual vote share ranged from -14.1 to -8.2 percentage points.

Increasing the proportion of landline calls raised Jeong's support rate and narrowed the gap with Park.

In the Munhwa Ilbo·Embrain Public poll with 10% landline calls, Jeong's support rate was 34.5%, the lowest among the four polls, while in the TJB Daejeon Broadcasting·Chungcheong Today·Realmeter polls with 40% landline calls, Jeong's support rate was 40.4%, the only one above 40%.

The gap between the two candidates was largest in the Munhwa Ilbo·Embrain Public poll at 9.2 percentage points and smallest in the TJB Daejeon Broadcasting·Chungcheong Today·Realmeter polls at 4.4 percentage points.

All four polls showed Park's support rate within about 2 percentage points, but Jeong's support rate was underestimated by about 10 percentage points, resulting in a reversal of the winner and loser.

The gap between Jeong's support rate in the Munhwa Ilbo·Embrain Public poll and his actual vote share reached as much as -14.1 percentage points.

This can be interpreted as a characteristic of Chungcheong region voters, who tend not to reveal their true feelings, or as evidence of the existence of a 'shy conservative.'

Another variable was the vote share of Kim Geun-tae, a former army general who ran as an independent after being cut off in the United Future Party's nomination process.

Kim showed support rates in the 5% range in all four polls but only received 3% of the actual vote.

His actual vote share was 2.2 to 2.6 percentage points lower than in the polls.

As the election race became a close contest between Park and Jeong, it is analyzed that some of Kim's supporters shifted their votes to Jeong, who shares a conservative stance, to avoid wasting their votes.