The National Election Commission announced that as of 4 p.m. on the 3rd, the voter turnout for the 21st presidential election was provisionally calculated at 71.5%.
Of the 44,391,871 registered voters for this presidential election, 31,724,667 have completed voting.
This figure reflects the results, including early voting from the 29th to the 30th of last month, where 15,423,607 participated (34.74%), as well as absentee and overseas voting counts. The National Election Commission will publish the combined early voting rates on its website starting at 1 p.m.
The current voter turnout is 0.4 percentage points higher than the same time during the 20th presidential election in 2022, which was 71.1%.
As the combined early voting turnout is the highest for any presidential election at this time, attention is focused on whether the final turnout will exceed 80% for the first time since the 15th presidential election in 1997. The final turnout for the 19th presidential election, which introduced early voting, was 77.2%, while the final turnout for the 20th was 77.1%.
The region with the highest voter turnout was South Jeolla (79.3%), followed by Gwangju (78.3%) and North Jeolla (77.5%). The lowest turnout was in Jeju (68.1%), followed by South Chungcheong (68.7%) and Busan (69.0%). The voter turnouts for Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi were 71.5%, 69.8%, and 71.4%, respectively.
Voting will take place from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. at 14,295 polling stations nationwide for 14 hours. Unlike early voting, in-person voting can only be done at the designated polling station based on the voter's address. The location of polling stations can be verified through the voting information sent to each household and the 'voter registration information system' of local government offices, as well as by using the polling station finder service on the National Election Commission's website.
However, if voters are in line at the polling station by 8 p.m. and received a waiting number, they will still be able to vote after the closing time.
Voters must bring a resident registration card, passport, driver's license, youth card, or a photo identification issued by a government office or public institution. Saved images of mobile IDs cannot be used.
Vote counting is scheduled to begin around 8:30 p.m. at 251 counting centers nationwide. The National Election Commission anticipates that the outlines of the winners will become clear around midnight. However, this timing may be advanced or delayed depending on the vote counts between candidates.