Wednesday’s election is unlikely to produce a majority winner, with the Saenuri Party and the Democratic United Party locked in a tight race, political pundits said Tuesday.

However, the main opposition DUP stands a fair chance of stealing control of the parliament from Saenuri through an alliance with the far-left Unified Progressive Party, the experts said.

On April 11, voters will pick 300 members of the single-chamber parliament in an election widely seen as a prelude to a presidential race later in the year.

In some 40 constituencies, the races were too close to call, making it difficult for poll experts to predict the likely number of seats won by each party.

According to Chosun Ilbo, the nation’s four major pollsters ― Media Research, Research & Research, Korea Gallup and Korea Research ― varied in their prediction of the winner. Two chose Saenuri while the other two said the DUP would win.

Still, they agreed that the winner’s portion would be around 140 seats, 10 seats shy of the majority. The largest and second-largest parties would be just 4 to 15 seats apart, the paper said.

Political analysts, too, are mixed in predicting the winner.

In a Hankuk Ilbo survey of 10 political analysts, the DUP was projected to win 135 to 140 seats, compared to Saenuri’s 132 to 136 seats. The UPP was expected to win around 10 to 15 seats.

The DUP-UPP alliance, thus, has a good chance of taking the majority of the seats, it said.

Mindful of the tight races, Park Sun-sook, secretary general of the DUP, said that an 1 percentage point uptick in voter turnout could determine the party’s fortunes.

In past elections, a higher turnout has proved to benefit the opposition bloc.

Leaders of the rival parties on Tuesday made their last-ditch appeal to voters in a bid to tip the scales in their favor.

Saenuri chief Park Geun-hye stopped her grueling tour of the country for a press conference at the National Assembly, asking voters to prevent a majority-holding opposition.

“Give us your vote so that we can keep the large opposition in check,” the politician said.

She claimed that the DUP-UPP alliance would sacrifice national interests for the sake of their outdated leftist ideology, citing their opposition to a free trade agreement with the U.S. as an example.

Han Myeong-sook, head of the DUP, hit the streets of Seoul, trying to woo undecided voters.

“Please judge this corrupt and arrogant administration through your vote,” she said in Songpa, southern Seoul.

President Lee Myung-bak and his Saenuri Party share the responsibility for corruption, irregularities, abuse of power and the mismanagement of the economy, she said.

By Lee Sun-young (milaya@heraldcorp.com)