The results of the exit (forecast) polls for the 6·3 local elections and the National Assembly by-elections, organized by the three terrestrial broadcasters (KBS·MBC·SBS) and the Korean Broadcasters Association, will be announced by the three broadcasters at 6 p.m. on the 3rd, when voting ends. Under the Public Official Election Act, exit polls can be conducted only on election day, making it difficult to accurately identify the preferences of voters who participated in early voting. Because of this, in recent local and general elections there have been instances where the candidate leading in exit polls differed from the eventual winner.

According to the Korean Broadcasters Association on the 2nd, the Joint Broadcast Networks Election Forecast Committee (KEP), formed by the three broadcasters and the association, will conduct exit polling from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the 3rd, election day. Roughly 100,000 voters exiting a total of 595 polling stations nationwide will be surveyed. The targets are heads of 16 metropolitan and provincial governments and superintendents of education, and for the National Assembly by-elections, exit polling will be conducted only in Pyeongtaek-eul, Gyeonggi, and Buk-gap, Busan.

Surveyors will stand 50 meters outside polling stations and ask every fifth voter exiting which candidate they voted for. The polling is conducted by opinion research firms Hankook Research, Korea Research, and Ipsos Korea. The three broadcasters will release the exit poll results at 6 p.m., when voting ends. Projections of winners and expected vote shares announced by the three networks may be cited in reports starting at 6:15 p.m., 15 minutes after polls close.

Under the Public Official Election Act, exit polls cannot be conducted on days other than election day. Consequently, the preferences of early voters, who account for over 40% of all voters, are excluded from exit polls. To correct for this source of error, the three broadcasters supplement the forecast with separate telephone surveys. For this election, the three broadcasters conducted a telephone survey of 28,500 people from the 30th of last month through the 2nd.

Looking back at past exit polls in general and local elections, projections in closely contested districts have been overturned. In a recent presidential election, there were also large gaps in the winner’s vote share. In last year’s 6·3 presidential election, then-candidate Lee Jae Myung was projected to win 51.7% of the vote, but actually received 49.4%. The gap in vote share between him and candidate Kim Moon-soo was projected at 12.4 percentage points by exit polls, but the actual margin was 8.2 percentage points, more than 4 percentage points different. At the time, some questioned whether there were problems with the opinion surveys used to adjust for early voting.

In the 6·1 local elections in 2022, the top finisher in the exit poll for the Gyeonggi governorship differed from the eventual winner. The three broadcasters’ projected vote shares were 49.4% for Kim Eun-hye of the People Power Party and 48.8% for Kim Dong-yeon of the Democratic Party, but the final winner was Kim Dong-yeon. The count showed a gap of 0.15 percentage points between the two, and analysts say that in such razor-thin races, forecasting results through exit polls is quite difficult.

Off-the-mark projections also abounded in the 2024 general election. In districts such as Dongjak-eul in Seoul (Na Kyung-won), Seongnam Bundang-gap in Gyeonggi (Ahn Cheol-soo), Hwaseong-eul in Gyeonggi (Lee Jun-seok), and Yangsan-eul in South Gyeongsang (Kim Tae-ho), the three broadcasters’ exit polls had forecast victories for the Democratic Party candidates, but the actual count was won by the conservative party candidates.