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Japan's general election: what the data shows

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Supporters of the Liberal Democratic Party react to the speech by Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at an election campaign rally in Tokyo, Japan, 21 October, 2017 (Photo: Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon).

In Brief

While the term ‘landslide’ has been commonly used in the media to describe the victory of Prime Minister Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan’s 2017 lower house election, this description needs some qualification. The LDP was down only six seats overall, but it did lose 18 seats to the ‘new opposition’ Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ) and the Party of Hope in single-member districts (SMDs).

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It lost 10 to the CDPJ and eight to the Party of Hope, with 12 LDP politicians only hanging on to their Diet seats via the party list in the proportional representation blocs.

For the CDPJ, most of its SMD victories were in metropolitan and urban districts. This was particularly true in Tokyo and Kanagawa, with four in Tokyo alone. In fact, it was the CDPJ — not the Party of Hope — that scored better against the LDP in Tokyo. The CDPJ outcompeted the LDP candidates in four seats as opposed to the Party of Hope’s one, and that is despite Tokyo being the ‘home base’ of party leader and Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike.

Another common view that the CDPJ and the Party of Hope ‘fought each other’ in the election also exaggerates the reality on the ground. In only 13.5 per cent of SMDs (39 electorates) did they do so, including 15 in Tokyo, six in Chiba and five in Kanagawa. Furthermore, the combined CDPJ–Party of Hope vote exceeded the LDP winner’s tally in only 14 constituencies, suggesting that even if the two new opposition parties had presented a unified candidate, they may not have gained many more seats.

The lack of competition between the two new contestants in the single-seat constituencies derives from two major factors. The largely metropolitan–urban CDPJ fielded only 63 candidates in the SMDs overall. The Party of Hope, which was aiming for a majority, ran 198. Further, because the two new parties rose from the ashes of the lower house Democratic Party (DP), in general they competed against the LDP in the districts where their respective Diet members had previously held seats, and hence not against each other. In fact, the CDPJ made a point of not running candidates in seats where ex-DP Party of Hope candidates were standing.

The success of ex-DP members who kept their options open by standing as Independents, such as Seiji Maehara, Yoshihiko Noda, Katsuya Okada and DP exile Shiori Yamao, also speaks to the continuing strength of candidate-centred electoral politics in Japan. This is in spite of the 1994 electoral reforms, which intended to create a party-centred system. Parties may be important, but they are not the only relevant factor in garnering support from voters.

As for the standing of leading LDP politicians in their own electorates, the Prime Minister is not the most popular among this group. He is outranked by current and future rivals for his job — Shigeru Ishiba (who won 83.6 per cent of the vote in Tottori (1) district) and Shinjiro Koizumi (who is the son of former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi and who scored 78.0 per cent in Kanagawa (11) district). Abe only managed 72.6 per cent of the vote in Yamaguchi (4) district.

The most popular LDP politician among local voters is Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera who won 85.7 per cent of the vote in Miyagi (6) district. Even disgraced ex-economy, trade and industry minister Yuko Obuchi garnered 64.9 per cent in Gumma (5) district, while equally disgraced former economic revitalisation minister and Japan’s leading TPP negotiator, Akira Amari, secured 56.1 per cent.

With respect to where the ruling LDP now sits on the rural–metropolitan seat spectrum, the electoral results in the SMDs once more display a much more balanced performance across all constituency types. The party won 69 per cent of metropolitan seats and 71 per cent of urban seats compared with 79 per cent of semi-urban seats, 74 per cent of semi-rural seats and 77 per cent of rural seats. The LDP’s electoral reliance on rural and semi-rural voters has also ended with the party securing around 20 per cent of its total number of seats in each constituency type. Electoral reforms have also reduced the number of SMDs in less populated rural areas.

In theory, this more balanced electoral distribution means that the Abe government has more leeway to reform the agricultural sector and protectionist farm policies. But Koya Nishikawa, who is one of Abe’s key allies among the farm policy ‘tribe’ and was an important player in helping to guide the TPP and reform of the agricultural cooperatives through the party, lost his seat in Tochigi (2) district, bringing an end to his 21-year career as a Diet politician.

Abe may have brought the LDP a supermajority of seats, but he did so with major rivals outperforming him. It remains to be seen if his snap electoral ‘landslide’ will deliver the outcomes he desires: consolidating his power and weakening his competitors in the party, as well as delivering on key policy outcomes for his administration, such as constitutional reform.

Aurelia George Mulgan is a Professor at the University of New South Wales, Canberra.

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