Kim Min-seok Wins Democratic Party Chair in Ranked-Choice Runoff

The former prime minister defeated incumbent chair Jung Chung-rae 54.1 percent to 45.9 percent in the party’s chairmanship election.

Kim Min-seok speaks at a joint campaign event event for Democratic Party chair and Supreme Council candidates in Naju Sports Park, Naju, South Korea, Aug. 15, 2026.

Former Prime Minister Kim Min-seok was elected as the leader of the ruling Democratic Party (DP), closing out a six-week race that exposed deep rifts between rival camps aligned with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung and outgoing party chair Jung Chung-rae.

Kim, a four-term lawmaker, won 54.08 percent of the final vote announced at the party’s national convention in Daejeon, defeating Jung, who took 45.92 percent. Kim fell short of a first-round majority under the combined count of member, delegate, and opinion-poll votes, triggering the party’s ranked-choice runoff for the first time in its history. Under that process, second-choice votes from backers of third-place finisher Rep. Song Young-gil were redistributed between Kim and Jung, producing Kim’s final voting margin. 

The new DP leader will oversee candidate nominations for the general elections in April 2028. More than that, the race was widely seen as a test of how firmly Lee has consolidated control over the DP since assuming presidency in 2025. The contest has widely been described as a proxy fight between the pro-Lee camp and a harder-line faction associated with Jung, who has at times pushed back against the presidential office on the pace of judicial overhaul and other issues. Kim’s campaign speech in July framed the race as a referendum on whether the party would fully back Lee’s agenda,

Kim’s strongest results came in Gwangju and the Jeolla provinces and the greater Seoul area after Lee announced an 800 trillion won ($564 billion) semiconductor investment package for the Gwangju region. Overall, however, Lee’s approval rating slipped to 44 percent in recent days, the lowest since he took office, according to local media reports.

How the Election Unfolded

This was the DP’s first party chair race under the new one-member, one-vote system. Dues-paying members and delegates account for 70 percent of the weight, and a national opinion survey makes up the remaining 30 percent. 

The public opinion poll was conducted over two days by two polling firms among a combined 4,000 respondents reached by automated phone survey, with participation limited to Democratic Party supporters and independents to screen out backers of the conservative opposition.

Because no rule guarantees a majority winner, the party adopted ranked-choice voting: if no candidate clears 50 percent on first-preference ballots, the last-place finisher is eliminated and votes are reallocated by second choice.

The voting took place in waves, with results announced region by region. Voting opened August 1 in Chungcheong, where Kim narrowly outpolled Jung, 45.05 percent to 44.61 percent, with Song a distant third at 10.34 percent. Jung answered the next day in Busan, Ulsan, and South Gyeongsang Province, beating Kim 46.65 percent to 43.85 percent. Kim then won Jeju and Incheon on August 8 with 47.75 percent to Jung’s 42.08 percent, and a fourth round spanning Gangwon Province, Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province followed on August 9, with Kim ahead 48.54 percent to 44.40 percent and the cumulative gap narrowing to 1.48 points.

The race turned decisively in Kim’s favor on August 15 in Gwangju and the Jeolla provinces, the party’s largest single bloc of members at roughly a third of the total. Kim won 57.54 percent there to Jung’s 32.65 percent, pushing his cumulative share past 50 percent for the first time. The final regional round, in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province on August 16, went to Kim by a far tighter margin, 46.66 percent to 46.28 percent, pulling his majority back below 50 percent and........

© The Diplomat