S. Korea's opposition party leads parliamentary elections with 62.5% votes counted

Lee Jae-myung (C front), leader of South Korea's main opposition Democratic Party, celebrates the leading in exit polls in the parliamentary elections with other leaders of the party in Seoul, South Korea, April 10, 2024. [Photo/Xinhua]

Korea's main liberal opposition Democratic Party led parliamentary elections, with 62.5 percent of votes counted.

The Democratic Party took the lead in 155 constituencies at about 11:30 p.m. local time (1530 GMT) on Wednesday, while ruling conservative People Power Party went ahead in 95 electoral districts, according to intermediate results released by the National Election Commission. Local media outlets continued to broadcast the results.

The quadrennial polls for 300 members of the National Assembly were carried out at 14,259 voting stations across the Asian country to let voters cast ballots for 254 constituency seats and 46 proportional representation (PR) slots.

The Democratic Party's satellite party was estimated to win 13 PR seats, and the People Power Party's sister party garnered 20 PR seats, with 10.6 percent of the PR ballots counted.

The minor liberal Rebuilding Korea Party snatched 11 PR slots, and the minor center-right New Reform Party secured two PR seats.

The minor center-left New Future Party, the New Reform Party, the Progressive Party and one independent candidate were leading in one constituency respectively.

The Democratic Party and its satellite party were projected to secure 178-197 seats, including the directly contested constituency seats and the PR slots, the joint exit polls from KBS, MBC and SBS showed.

The People Power Party and its satellite party were estimated to win 85-110 parliamentary seats.

The tentative final voter turnout was 67.0 percent, or 29,662,313 voters among the electorate of 44,280,011 people.

It was higher than the previous election's 66.2 percent in 2020 and marked the highest in 32 years since the turnout posted 71.9 percent in 1992.

The turnout of early voting, held last Friday and Saturday, reached the highest 31.28 percent since early voting was first adopted in the 2014 local elections for the nationwide election. It was higher than 26.69 percent in 2020.

The turnout of overseas voting, which continued for six days through April 1 among domestic voters staying abroad, logged a new high of 62.8 percent. The overseas voting was introduced in 2012.

The election commission planned to declare the final election result early Thursday after completing the vote count.