The Democratic Party applies pressure on the 'bottom 20%' by cutting even single-candidate nomination areas

Won Hye-young, Chairperson of the Democratic Party's Nomination Management Committee, is attending the first meeting of the Central Party Public Office Candidate Recommendation Management Committee held at the National Assembly on the 14th, delivering opening remarks. Photo by Yoon Dong-joo doso7@

[Asia Economy Reporter Kang Nahum] The Democratic Party of Korea is showing a strong determination to "refresh incumbents" by strengthening the verification of single-candidate nomination application areas. This is being evaluated as the party's strong will to establish a "systematic nomination," while also being analyzed as a strategy to pressure incumbent lawmakers in the "bottom 20%."

According to the Democratic Party on the 6th, it has been decided to conduct a "suitability survey" even for single-candidate nomination application areas where there are no internal party competitors in this nomination screening. Originally, the plan was to conduct the suitability survey only for areas with multiple nomination applicants, but it has now been expanded to all constituencies.

In particular, even if an incumbent lawmaker who applied as a single candidate is not included in the bottom 20% list of lawmaker evaluations, if their suitability is significantly lower than the party's approval rating, exclusion from nomination will be considered. The party plans to proceed with candidate replacement through future strategic nomination area selection or additional recruitment.

Won Hye-young, the chairperson of the nomination management committee, appeared on a radio broadcast the day before and said, "If the candidate's approval rating is much lower than the party's approval rating, or if the opposition rate is much higher than the support rate, can an incumbent lawmaker win just because they applied as a single candidate? We cannot help but worry about this."

The Democratic Party also encourages youth under 45 who have passed preliminary candidate verification to run in single-candidate application areas, and plans to actively place recruited talents in single-candidate application areas as well. This is a kind of "assassin nomination."

This policy of the Democratic Party is largely analyzed as a measure to pressure the "bottom 20%" lawmakers. Initially, the party leadership expected that if lawmakers in the bottom 20% list declared they would not run in the general election, the scale of refreshing incumbents would naturally increase.

However, as a result of the nomination application reception, among 109 incumbent lawmakers running, 64 (59%) were single candidates without primary competition, and it is known that even lawmakers in the bottom 20% were included in these single-candidate areas, raising the possibility of uncontested nominations for them. Therefore, some within the party expressed concerns that the incumbent refresh might fail.

Some lawmakers' offices perceive the strengthening of nomination screening as a "side effect" of the non-disclosure policy of the bottom 20% list. This is because it gives the impression that even lawmakers who received high scores in evaluations and have competitiveness must pass multiple layers of verification.

An official from a lawmaker's office said, "It is natural to conduct thorough verification before nominating a candidate," but added, "It seems like this is to weed out the bottom 20% lawmakers, but if they wanted to apply such pressure, wouldn't public disclosure of the list have been the best method?"

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.