One of the characteristics of elections, including the presidential election, elections of National Assemblymen and elected members of local governments is voting behaviors based on regionalism. It has been argued that Korean major parties have attracted their political support from certain regions. As a result, several political reformists have deserted that a new election system be needed to deal with voting behavior based on regionalism.
In this political context, late president Nho introduced a Single non-transferable Ballot system at the level of lower-tier local councils. Local elections in 2006 was carried out under the new election system. To the contrary to expectation, the Single non-transferable Ballot system seemed not to be effective to deal with regional voting behavior.
The second local election under the almost same framework was executed in 2010. This study aims to compare the results of the local elections between 2006 and 2010 focusing on four metropolitan cities, including Busan, Kwangju, Daegu, and Dajun and three provinces, including Junranamdo, Kyungsamgbukdo and Chungchungnamdo. This study confirmed that there is significant difference of election results between 2006 and 2010. In comparison with the result of 2006, the output of 2010 lower-tier local councils show that the voting behavior based on regionalism is significantly diminished.