Shinzo Abe headed for big win in Japanese election

By Todd Crowell

TOKYO - Buffeted by winds and heavy rain from Typhoon Lan, Japanese voters went to the polls on Sunday for a snap general election.

The polls are expected to return to power the ruling Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner Komeito were projected to win 325 seats of the 475-seat House of Representatives, the more powerful lower house of Japan’s bicameral parliament. The LDP won 290 seats and Komeito 35, according to unofficial results announced by local media.

The figure is significant since it would give the new Abe government enough votes in both houses to amend the constitution.

This is going to be the third smashing victory for Abe since his party returned to power in the 2012 election. It almost certainly guarantees his re-election as party president next September and at least four more years in power.

In an Election Day speech, Abe said his government would strive not to become complacent. "My [economic policy, Abenomics] is only half-way done."

Abe's decision to call an early general election was widely seen as a gamble, sort of like the one that Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May called earlier this year, which cost her a majority in parliament.

But Abe calculated that the time was ripe due to the persistent unpopularity of the official opposition, the Democratic Party (DP) and the introduction on a national scale of Tokyo’s Governor Yuriko Koike’s new party, the Party of Hope.

Koike had hoped to duplicate her success in the summer Tokyo Municipal Assembly election on a national scale, announcing the new party on the very day that Abe formally dissolved the parliament and scheduled an election.

Shortly thereafter, Seiji Maehara, newly elected chief of the DP, announced that he was dissolving the party and urging members to run on the Party of Hope ticket. This gave Koike a ready-made cluster of parliamentarians.

However, it offended some members of the DP, especially after she said any DP members joining her group would have to be "vetted" for their views on different issues. This gave Yukio Edano, a former DP leader, chance to form a new party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, which became the most interesting new face in the election.

A former chief cabinet secretary, Edano was the government’s face in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. He appealed to more liberal voters, dissatisfied with the conservative bent of both the LDP and Koike’s new party.

"I feel he is more realistic than the other candidates," said Tsugumi Kawagoe, a single woman living in Tokyo, speaking to Anadolu Agency.

As of mid-evening the two new parties led by Koike and Edano were trading places to become the largest opposition bloc, with roughly 50 seats each. Koike said she had ruled out forming a coalition with the LDP.

Analysts agree that Koike hurt her prospects by declining to run for the parliament herself. It created a strange system where one of the contesting parties did not have a candidate for prime minister.