Anchor: Under South Korea’s election law, opinion polls cannot be published for one week leading up to Election Day. With the ban going into effect Wednesday, KBS conducted a survey from Sunday to Tuesday asking respondents how they’d vote if the presidential election were held the next day. The Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung maintains a strong lead, with 45 percent of respondents saying they would vote for him, but the race might be closer if the conservative second- and third-place candidates decided to unite at the last minute. 
Kim Bum-soo has more on the last opinion poll before the one-week blackout period. 

Report: In the latest KBS poll, respondents were asked who would get their votes should the presidential election take place the following day.

Forty-five percent said they supported Democratic Party(DP) presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, while 36 percent picked Kim Moon-soo of the People Power Party(PPP).

The nine percentage point gap is outside the survey’s margin of error. 

As Lee Jae-myung maintained his clear lead, ten percent of the respondents picked the minor Reform Party’s Lee Jun-seok.

The Democratic Labor Party’s Kwon Young-gook garnered support from less than one percent of the respondents, as did independent candidates Hwang Kyo-ahn and Song Jin-ho, while eight percent gave no response. 

Since last week’s KBS poll, the DP’s Lee lost four percentage points as the PPP’s Kim and the Reform Party’s Lee each gained two percentage points.

In the latest survey, 33 percent of the respondents said the PPP’s Kim and the minor Reform Party’s Lee should join forces, while 21 percent opposed the idea and 43 percent said they weren’t interested. 

In the event of a merger with the PPP’s Kim representing the conservative camp, the former labor minister won support from 41 percent of respondents against 44 percent for the DP candidate.

Lee Jae-myung’s lead in this scenario is much less solid as the gap between them falls within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus three-point-one percentage points. 

On the other hand, if the Reform Party’s Lee was the candidate in the hypothetical alliance, 34 percent said they would support him while 43 percent chose the DP candidate.

Commissioned by KBS and conducted by Hankook Research, the nationwide survey of one-thousand adults was conducted over the phone from Sunday to Tuesday. 

With a 21-point-five percent response rate, the poll had a confidence level of 95 percent with a margin of error of plus or minus three-point-one percentage points.
Kim Bum-soo, KBS World Radio News.