Oh Se-hoon, the People Power Party's Seoul mayoral candidate, edged out Democratic Party of Korea candidate Chong Won-o by 0.1 percentage point in the final stretch of the June 3 local elections. A "golden cross" occurred 13 hours after the vote count began. According to the National Election Commission, as of 8 a.m. on the 4th, Oh was leading with 48.77%, ahead of Chong's 48.51%. The gap between the two candidates was 13,149 votes.
In the early stages of the count, which began around 6:20 p.m. the previous day, Chong led Oh by more than 30 percentage points. Even after the count surpassed 50%, the gap between the two remained over 20 percentage points. At the time, based on exit polls by the three major broadcasters, Chong was expected to win.
This trend began to narrow after 2 a.m. that day. After shrinking to a 5-point gap, it rapidly tightened to a 1–2 percentage point difference around 5 a.m. After 6 a.m., it narrowed to around 0.5 percentage point, and at about 7:17 a.m., the two candidates switched places.
As of now, the vote-counting rate by district is under 80% in areas such as Yeongdeungpo (72.37%), Dongjak (66.87%), and Songpa (68.97%). In particular, in Jamsil 7-dong of Songpa District, where the "ballot shortage" incident halted the count, the ballots have not yet been transferred to the counting center. The commission said it estimated about 2,000 votes were contained in two ballot boxes.