Lee Jae-myung Declared Winner in South Korea's 21st Presidential Election

On June 3, 2025, the results of South Korea's 21st presidential election indicated that Lee Jae-myung (이재명) of the Democratic Party (더불어민주당) is set to be the winner, as reported by major broadcasters KBS, MBC, and SBS. Around 11:40 PM, these networks announced that Lee's victory was 'certain.'

According to the National Election Commission, as of 11:42 PM, the vote count had reached 41.27%, with Lee Jae-myung receiving 48.89% of the votes, while Kim Moon-soo (김문수) of the People Power Party (국민의힘) garnered 42.77%. Other candidates included Lee Jun-seok (이준석) of the Reform Party (개혁신당) with 7.29% and Kwon Young-guk (권영국) of the Democratic Labor Party (민주노동당) with 0.92%.

Initially, Kim led the count, with 46.35% to Lee's 45.60% at 5% of the votes counted. However, by the time 15% of the votes were tallied, Lee had overtaken Kim, leading to a widening gap.

A joint exit poll conducted by KBS, MBC, and SBS predicted that Lee would secure 51.7% of the votes, while Kim was expected to receive 39.3%, and Lee Jun-seok was projected to have 7.7%. This exit poll was conducted by the Korea Election Prediction Committee (KEP) across 325 polling stations, surveying over 80,000 voters, with a margin of error of ±0.8% at a 95% confidence level.

The National Election Commission anticipates that a clearer picture of the election results will emerge after about 70-80% of the votes are counted, with the counting expected to continue into the morning of June 4.

As for voter turnout, the preliminary figure stands at 79.4%, marking the highest turnout in 28 years. Out of 44,391,871 registered voters, 35,524,416 participated in the election, surpassing the final turnout of 77.1% in the 2022 election and 77.2% in the 2017 election.