A mother holds her child while casting her ballot for Wednesday's local elections at a polling station at Biseul Elementary School in Dalseong County, Daegu. (Yonhap) The outcome of most races in Wednesday's local elections and parliamentary by-elections is expected to become clear by midnight, while tightly contested races could remain undecided until around 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. Thursday, according to the National Election Commission.Voting, which began nationwide at 6 a.m., will continue until 6 p.m., after which exit poll results will be announced.Ballot counting is expected to begin in earnest about 20 minutes after polls close.Results from metropolitan and provincial governor races and parliamentary by-elections are likely to emerge sooner, as ballots for those contests will be counted before those for local council elections.The wider the vote gap, the sooner a winner is likely to be determined.In the 2022 local elections, current Gyeonggi Province Gov. Kim Dong-yeon narrowly defeated People Power Party candidate Kim Eun-hye by just 0.15 percentage points in the race for Gyeonggi governor, with the result not decided until about nine hours after vote counting began.But in traditional party strongholds such as Daegu, Busan, North Gyeongsang Province and South Jeolla Province, some candidates were projected as likely winners as early as 10 p.m., soon after vote counting began.