The Marmot’s Hole

Here is this week’s poll from Realmeter:

1. Lee Myung-bak 52.1% (up 2.0% from last week)
2. Chung Dong-young 18.6% (up 0.7%)
3. Moon Kook-hyun 10.3% (down 1.7%)
4. Kwon Young-ghil 3.9% (up 0.8%)
5. Rhee In-jae 2.2% (down 0.8%)
6. Others 1.8% (down 0.2%)
7. Undecided 11.1% (down 0.7%)

This week’s Realmeter poll did not include Lee Hoi-chang, who might throw his hat in the ring again, although I suspect they will include him next week.

Anyway, you can’t get prospective pundit points by just reporting stuff; you have to make predictions.  So here are a few (in order of confidence).

• The BBK scandal will not stop Lee Myung-bak.  So far, for all the hype and breathless headlines, the only thing that has been proven so far is that Lee was cheated by a business partner.  Perhaps that shows a lack of judgement on picking talent (a serious flaw for a chief executive, BTW, as the Chosun’s cartoonist notes) but it does not prove that Lee is a crook.  Even if Lee’s old partner comes back and implicates Lee, many Korean voters remember the Kim Dae-eop affairand are not likely to give the accuser much credit.  Furthermore, as has been said before by others, many people suspect that Lee plays a little loose with the rules and they just don’t care.  After five years of the Roh administration, many voters are willing to take some with a little dirt on his hands as long as he is competent.
• Lee Hoi-chang will not run (or will drop out if he does run).  It would take a major shift away from Lee Myung-bak to make his hopes viable, which I don’t think will happen (as noted above)
• Rhee In-jae will drop out in exchange for a promise from the UNDP of a cabinet post and cooperation in next April’s legislative elections.
• Kwon Young-ghil will get 6-10% of the vote.  The longer Lee Myung-bak holds a huge lead, the higher Kwon’s numbers will go since people will not care so much about “wasting” their votes.  Kwon is the hard-core anti-fta and anti-American candidate.

I am not sure if Moon Kook-hyun will drop out or not.  He might stay in the race if he can maintain at least 10% in the polls to position himself for the 2012 election.

If you were to stick a gun to my head right now, I would predict the following results:  Lee Myung-bak 52%, Chung Dong-young 25%, Moon Kook-hyun 12%, Kwon Young-ghil 8%, Others 3%.  If 52% doesn’t seem like a landslide, it is worth noting that no candidate has gotten over 50%  since the sixth republic began in 1987.