Japan: Abe set for another term despite declining public support – Danske Bank

Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) are poised to remain the biggest party by far and continue in government after the general election to the Lower House on 22 October, according to analysts at Danske Bank.

Key Quotes

“In Japan, the electoral system tends to favour the biggest party. In the 465-seat Japanese Lower House, 289 seats are elected in single constituent first-past-the-post elections while the remaining seats are elected with proportional representation. The main question is currently whether the LDP and its coalition partner Komeito can maintain their two-thirds super majority that they have held since the general election in 2012. Abe needs to form a two-thirds majority in order to realise his plans to revise Japan’s 70-year-old pacifist constitution, and thus validate the existence of the Japan Self-Defense Force. For this, he probably needs to collaborate with the new Party of Hope and not the Buddhist pacifist Komeito.”

“For a while, PM Abe might have regretted his 25 September call for a snap election, as Tokyo governor Yoriko Koike founded Kibō no Tō (Party of Hope) just hours before Abe declared an early election. Koike is a popular political figure in Japan and a former minister of defence in the first Abe cabinet. When the leader of the opposition Democratic Party (DP), Seiji Maehara, announced that the party had split just a few days later, and many of the representatives started to emerge as candidates for Party of Hope, a united opposition and a strong alternative to LDP rule was suddenly a possibility. However, not all DP candidates got along with Koike, which has split the opposition once again as the new Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) rose from the ashes. Furthermore, Koike has decided not to run for parliament, which effectively leaves Party of Hope without a PM-candidate.”