President-elect Lee Jae-myung did not achieve more than half of the total votes in the 21st presidential election. As of 5:10 a.m. on the 4th, when the vote count reached 100%, Lee garnered 49.42%, 0.58 percentage points short of the majority. The number of votes received was 17,287,513.
Runner-up candidate Kim Moon-soo received 14,395,639 votes (41.15%). Lee Jun-seok of the Reform Party secured 2,917,523 votes (8.34%). Kwon Young-guk of the Democratic Labor Party obtained 344,150 votes (0.98%).
Combined, the votes received by Kim Moon-soo and Lee Jun-seok total 49.49%, surpassing Lee's vote share by a margin of 0.07 percentage points.
In an exit poll released by the three terrestrial broadcasters at 8 p.m. on the 3rd, Lee was projected to achieve more than 51% of the vote. Based on this, there was speculation that Lee could become the first president to secure a majority of the votes since former President Park Geun-hye.
The president with the next highest vote percentage after former President Park was former President Roh Moo-hyun, who received 48.91% of the vote. President-elect Lee Jae-myung surpasses former President Roh to record the second-highest vote percentage in history.
In terms of vote count, Lee Jae-myung holds the record for the most votes in history. He is the first president-elect to receive over 17 million votes.
In the last presidential election, former President Yoon Suk-yeol received 16,394,815 votes.