Japan’s ruling LDP loses majority in worst election setback in years

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Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic party has lost its parliamentary majority in its worst electoral reversal for 15 years, after its attempt to use a snap general election to draw a line under months of scandal backfired.

Projections by national broadcaster NHK suggested the LDP and its much smaller coalition partner Komeito could also collectively fall short of the 233 seats needed to control Japan’s lower house of parliament.

The loss of a coalition majority would dramatically weaken the LDP’s hold on power and could lead Japanese politics into uncertainty and deadlock.

“Looking at results, it is true voters have handed us a harsh verdict and we have to humbly accept this result,” Shigeru Ishiba, LDP leader and prime minister, told NHK in a televised interview.

According to NHK’s count, by just before 2am on Monday morning, with 20 seats left to declare, the LDP had secured only 186 seats.

Economists warned that the electorate’s unexpectedly severe punishment of the LDP could trigger high volatility in markets on Monday. While the LDP will remain the largest party, parliamentary paralysis could stop its tentative pro-growth structural reform agenda in its tracks.

Political analysts said failure to achieve a coalition majority would thrust the LDP into an effort to secure a third coalition partner.

The election, which handed voters a chance to protest against scandal and economic stagnation, produced significant gains for the main opposition Constitutional Democratic party of Japan, which by early morning in Tokyo on Monday had won 143 seats.

Constitutional Democratic party of Japan leader Yoshihiko Noda points to the name of a successful CDPJ candidate © Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images

The CDPJ, which is led by former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda, had campaigned by playing on public revulsion at a slush-fund scandal embroiling the LDP.

Political analysts have said the loss of a coalition majority would almost certainly force the resignation of Ishiba, who was elevated to the role just weeks ago and who surprised many in his own party by calling the election in record time. Were he to quit, Ishiba would become Japan’s shortest-serving leader of the modern era.

Ishiba told NHK it was too early to discuss whether he would step down and take responsibility for the heavy reversal.

The coalition, if it falls short, could try to include smaller opposition parties. The LDP could also consider readmitting to the party members of parliament whom it did not endorse for this election because of their involvement in the slush fund scandal.

But the scale of the LDP’s setback appears likely to usher in a new episode for Japanese politics and to mark the decisive end of the era dominated by the late prime minister Shinzo Abe.

Japan’s voters have kept the LDP in government for most of the past 70 years © Richard A. Brooks/AFP via Getty Images

Jesper Koll, an economist and long-term Japan watcher, said the election result would intensify infighting and rivalries inside the LDP, making progress on reform almost impossible.

“In the world of money and investment, a key pillar to the bullish Japan thesis has been that Japan is a bastion of political and policy stability. After today’s election, this will become more difficult to argue,” Koll said.

Retiree Kimihiro Okuma, a longtime LDP supporter, said earlier in the day that he was planning to shift his vote to another party.

“As a capitalist country, we have been safe under the Liberal Democratic party, and I think that was good, but recently things have become outrageous,” said Okuma, 79. “I basically support them, but . . . they have not changed the fundamental nature of the party, and they should be punished.”

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It was by far the LDP’s worst result since it lost power in 2009 to the Democratic party, a forerunner of the CDPJ. Ishiba, an LDP veteran, told a rally on Saturday that his party — in government for most of the past 70 years — was facing its “first major headwind” since it returned to power in 2012.

Ishiba’s unusually frank admission highlighted the risk he took in calling the election just a few days after being sworn in. A move intended to catch the opposition parties off guard and secure a clear mandate from the public has instead given Japan’s electorate — disgusted with money scandals at the LDP and feeling the strain of rising living costs — a forum to vent their dissatisfaction.

In his last day of campaigning, CDPJ leader Noda had stressed that the opposition party did not expect to win a majority and was not presenting radically different policies, but that the election represented a chance to punish the LDP and dent its capacity to rule.

The LDP, said Noda, shows “no sign of remorse” for the scandal that had dominated headlines for months and called on voters to end an era of politics in which “the general public are made to look like fools”.

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