Exit polls in South Korea forecast that liberal candidate Moon Jae-in will win an election Tuesday to succeed ousted President Park Geun-hye.
Official results weren't expected for hours, but the exit poll of about 89,000 voters at 330 polling stations, jointly commissioned by three major television stations and released just after polls closed, showed Moon receiving 41.4 percent of the vote.
His two main rivals, conservative Hong Joon-pyo and centrist Ahn Cheol-soo, were expected to garner 23.3 percent and 21.8 percent, respectively, according to the exit poll, which had a margin of error of 0.8 percentage points.
Such polls are merely a snapshot of the stated intentions of certain voters.
The final opinion surveys released last week showed Moon, the Democratic Party candidate, had about a 20 percentage point lead over his two main challengers.
A win by Moon would end a decade of conservative rule in South Korea and could result in sharp departures from recent policy toward nuclear-armed North Korea.
Moon has called for engagement with North Korea, saying that the hard-line approach favored by conservative governments did nothing to prevent the North from expanding its nuclear bomb and missile programs and only reduced South Korea's voice in international efforts to deal with its rival.
The winning candidate will be officially sworn in as South Korea's new president after the election commission finishes the vote count and declares the winner Wednesday morning. This forgoes the usual two-month transition because Tuesday's vote was a by-election to choose a successor to Park, whose term was to end in February 2018.
Following months of protests by millions and impeachment by lawmakers, Park was removed from office and arrested in March over corruption allegations. The new South Korean president will still serve out a full, single five-year term.
"I gave all my body and soul (to the election) to the very end," Moon, 64, told reporters Tuesday after casting his ballot in Seoul.
Moon was chief of staff for the last liberal president, the late Roh Moo-hyun, who sought closer ties with North Korea by setting up large-scale aid shipments to the North and by working on now-stalled joint economic projects.
Hong, an outspoken former provincial governor who pitched himself as a "strongman," described the election as a war between ideologies and questioned Moon's patriotism.
After voting, Hong said the election was a "war of regime choices between people, whether they decide to accept a North Korea-sympathizing leftist government or a government that can protect the liberty of the Republic of Korea," South Korea's formal name.
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