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Significance
These two cities have over 25% of the total electorate, making this a key political barometer. The Democrats’ entire leadership resigned. Soaring real estate prices and a scandal at a state housing agency were major factors in the anti-government swing.
Impacts
Moon cannot run for the presidency again, and, as always in South Korea, he will struggle to exert authority in his final year in office.
With a hostile central government and a solidly Democrat city council, Oh will struggle to tackle Seoul’s housing crisis as he has promised.
A striking rightward swing among young men, but not young women, bodes well for the PPP and ill for social harmony.
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2021
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