Last updated on August 16, 2024
Frequent rain the past few weeks has brought cooler weather, and with it, an interest in the upcoming presidential elections in Korea and the United States.
Both elections stir uncertainty. In Korea, the list of candidates remains fluid because Ahn Cheol-soo is taking his time about making a decision on whether to enter the race. If he does offer his candidacy, polls project a close race between Ahn and Park Geun-hye, the ruling New Frontier Party’s nominee.
In the U.S., the recent back-to-back conventions have highlighted President Obama and Mitt Romney, but neither has closed the deal and the race remains extremely close. The closeness of the races in both countries suggests that voters are unsettled about the choices.
Much of the unsettled feeling about the elections comes from the vast political middle. Commentators in both countries frequently comment on the sharp divisions among voters. In Korea, generational and regional divisions dominated the conversation, whereas partisan divisions control the discussion in the U.S. Commentators conclude that the candidates have to fight over a small number of undecided voters.
Recent history is equivocal. In Korea, the 1997 and 2002 elections were close, but the 1992 and 2007 elections produced a large gap between the winner and the losers. The 2000 and 2004 elections were very close, but the 1996 and 2008 elections were landslides. The 1987 election in Korea, the first direct presidential election since 1971 was a bitter three-way race in which the winner received a paltry 36 percent of the vote. In the 1992 U.S. election, a third party candidate received the highest percentage of votes of any third party candidate since 1912.
Clearly, voters are willing to jump around. The economic crisis in Korea in 1997 no doubt helped put opposition candidate Kim Dae-jung over the top, whereas the near collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008 elected Barack Obama. At other times, promises of change, both in a liberal and conservative direction can move votes. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Lee Myung-bak all won solid victories by calling for a new direction. Style and charisma help, too, because, just as in everyday life, people respond more positively to people they like.
Jumps at the local level are even more interesting. In 2002, Seoul elected the conservative Lee Myung-bak mayor, but in 2011, elected the progressive Park Won-soon. Across the nation, conservatives controlled many local governments in the 2000s, but the 2010 local elections swept progressives back into power. Many of the new leaders have started pragmatic initiatives to address local problems.
The case of New York is even more interesting. In presidential and congressional elections, the city votes overwhelmingly for Democrats, but has not elected a Democratic mayor since 1989. Michael Bloomberg, the current mayor, was a Democrat early in life, but was elected as a Republican. He left the party in 2007 and ran for a third term as an independent in 2009.
His predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, was also Democrat early in life, but switched parties in 1981. Ed Koch, Democratic mayor from 1977-1989 was re-elected in landslide in 1981 as a Democrat-Republican ticket. Koch himself has jumped all over the map. In 2004, he endorsed George W. Bush for re-election, but endorsed Barack Obama in 2008. Each of these mayors reached across party lines because they offered pragmatic (though often controversial) solutions to the most serious problems facing New York City at the time.
All of which shows that voters reward politicians who offer solutions rather than ideological rhetoric and “ad hominem” attacks. To date, we have heard little about what candidates in Korea and the U.S. plan to do about the problems facing their nations. To make matters worse, the candidates have failed to define the problems clearly. Instead, they appeal to their ideological base while attacking their opponents. The banal narrative in the campaigns is turning off voters and stirring unease.
At the heart of the unease on both sides of the Pacific is a sense of insecurity about the future. The broad middle class in both nations is worried about jobs, housing, and education. Slowing economic growth makes jobs scarcer and salary growth slower. Worries about housing are centered on affordability for renters and declining values for owners. The cost of education, particularly as it relates to university education, is a grinding concern. With worries like these, voters, except perhaps for the wealthy and those with secure jobs, have little patience for partisan ideology.
The problems are complex and defy easy solutions, but voters know that increased economic growth ― growing the pie ― is the most pragmatic solution. The problem is how. That is the question that voters so desperately want the candidates to answer; they will reward those who do.