Japan’s voters could end more than a decade of Liberal Democratic Party dominance on Sunday, forcing the ruling party into power-sharing deals that could undermine the country’s leadership.
The general election, nine days before the US chooses a new president, adds uncertainty to an already turbulent geopolitical landscape as the Tokyo government faces growing tensions with neighbouring China and inflation squeezes Japanese households.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s conservative LDP, in government for almost all of the postwar era, has had a majority in the lower house of parliament since 2012, ruling in coalition with Komeito, on which it depends to control the less-powerful upper house.
But discontent over an LDP political funding scandal and a rising cost of living in the world’s fourth-biggest economy threatens the ruling party.
“Public anger has not subsided. The election is going to be very close for the LDP,” said Tomoaki Iwai, professor emeritus at Nihon University and an expert on money in politics.
An opinion survey in the Asahi newspaper on Monday suggested the party could lose as many as 50 of its 247 seats in the lower chamber and Komeito could slip to fewer than 30, putting the coalition below the 233 needed for a majority.
The LDP will remain easily the biggest force in parliament, but many votes could go to the number two party, the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which toppled the LDP in 2009. The CDPJ could win 140 seats, the Asahi estimated.
If the LDP needs to rely on Komeito to form a government, that would give the junior partner more influence.
Komeito, affiliated with Japan’s biggest lay Buddhist organisation, has been reluctant to back decisions it sees as stepping away from Japan’s postwar pacifism, such as acquiring the longer-range weapons the LDP argues are needed to deter China from starting a war in East Asia.
