On the 30th, the office of Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon refuted media reports claiming that the Mirae Hanguk Research Institute, reportedly operated in practice by Myung Tae-gyun, manipulated unpublished opinion polls in favor of candidate Oh Se-hoon during the 2021 Seoul mayoral by-election, calling them "pure errors and nonsense."
Regarding the related report by Newstapa on the same day, Shin Seon-jong, spokesperson for Seoul City, countered, saying, "They are framing it as if Myung's manipulated opinion polls influenced the primary and unification processes."
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon is responding to a question related to Myeong Tae-gyun during the announcement of support measures for small business owners held on the 26th at the Seoul City Hall briefing room in Jung-gu, Seoul. Photo by Jo Yong-jun
Spokesperson Shin first pointed out, "Both the People Power Party's main primary and the opposition candidate unification primary during the election were conducted entirely through 100% general opinion polls (telephone interviews)," adding, "Unpublished opinion polls cannot be disclosed externally, including to the media, so they cannot have any impact on the primaries."
He continued, "The 'Myung Tae-gyun style' polls, which inflate the number of respondents, are fundamentally bogus, so they were rejected and expelled by the Oh Se-hoon campaign. No matter how closely you examine the Newstapa report, there is no trace that these polls were delivered to the Oh Se-hoon campaign," he pointed out.
Furthermore, Spokesperson Shin emphasized, "Manipulated opinion polls are generally used as a means to sell survey results to election campaigns. In other words, they are for business purposes, which Newstapa surely knows," adding, "Both the party primary and the unification primary were conducted entirely through 100% general opinion polls. The polling method was direct telephone interviews, which is far from ARS (Automated Response System) polling."
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