performances of exporting companies in provinces owing to a weak won; the trickle-down effects of the government’s restoration project on four major rivers; Pyeongchang’s successful bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics; and the Expo 2012 Yeosu.
Given these circumstances, it may be assumed that many middle-class people in provincial regions are experiencing a real estate bubble in this election year like the one Seoul residents saw during 2002-2007. To people in provincial regions, the ominous buzzword “house poor” should merely be a fuzzy word from distant future or hearsay from the capital city.
Based on these assumptions, there is a high possibility of the middle class in provincial regions having totally different feelings toward the Lee Myung-bak administration than that in the capital area. Let’s examine the results of two elections that coincided with the peak of the Seoul area housing price bubble. In the 2007 presidential election, conservative candidates Lee Myung-bak and Lee Hoi-chang garnered support from over 60 percent of voters in the Seoul area. Such a trend continued to prevail in the general elections of the following year, with the ruling party winning in 81 out of the 111 constituencies in the capital region.
These election results showed a considerable number of middle-class voters in the Seoul metropolitan area cast their ballots in consideration of their interests related to the property market, as many experts pointed out. Some even said the elections were “votes for apartments,” while others defined the voting pattern as “politics of desire.” In this context, one may predict that the “politics of desire” will again be practiced today at polling stations in provincial regions.
After the April 2012 general election, many analysts said the election proved the incompetence of the opposition, which hardly did anything more than ask the voters to “pass judgment on the governing power.” However, isn’t it possible that the election brought to light the “politics of desire” gaining currency in provincial areas? Isn’t it possible that the middle class in provincial regions, relishing benefits from soaring property prices, cast their ballots for their apartments, while the capital area was overflowing with painful outcries of the middle class suffering from falling housing prices and polarization? In fact, opposition candidates performed poorly in nearly all areas except Seoul and Jeolla provinces, and progressive candidates suffered crushing defeats in the traditional labor strongholds of Ulsan and Changwon.
It may be a little belated to predict that the housing market polarization will be a major variable in today’s presidential poll. Nonetheless, I hope that before going to the polls today, voters will check