DP presidential candidate Lee leads in 3-way race against PPP, minor party candidates: poll

- Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party’s (DP) presidential candidate, maintained the lead in a possible three-way race against the People Power Party’s (PPP) candidate Kim Moon-soo and Lee Jun-seok, the candidate of a minor conservative party, for the June 3 election, a survey showed Monday.

The DP candidate Lee led the poll at 46.6 percent, followed by Kim with 27.8 percent and Lee Jun-seok, the New Reform Party candidate, with 7.5 percent, according to the survey conducted by Realmeter on 1,509 adults aged over 18 from Wednesday to Friday.

Lee also maintained the lead with 46.5 percent in another potential three-way race against former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo with 34.3 percent and Lee Jun-seok with 5.9 percent, the poll showed.

Realmeter conducted the survey before Kim was nominated as the PPP presidential candidate on Saturday. It also took place as the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s acquittal of the DP candidate in an election law violation case on Thursday.

Han, who announced his bid for presidency on Friday, has expressed his willingness to unify candidacies with Kim.

In the previous week’s poll, Lee Jae-myung had led the hypothetical race at 50.9 percent, followed by Kim at 23.3 percent and Lee Jun-seok at 7.4 percent. Realmeter did not conduct a poll on a three-way race involving Han at the time.

The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, with a confidence rate of 95 percent.

South Korea is set to hold a presidential election on June 3 after former President Yoon Suk Yeol was removed from office over his failed martial law bid.