Japan Press Weekly

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2013 October 16 - 22 [POLITICS]

Long-term decline of LDP and its ‘false majority’ in Diet

Media are busy promoting the idea that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is doing great. In reality, however, the support for the party has been declining steadily over the last half century.

“Though the LDP won a landslide victory in the last election securing a majority of seats in the Diet, the party fell short of regaining its past strength,” Professor at the Tokyo University Institute of Social Science Uno Shigeki said.

He said that in the earlier decades in the postwar era, the LDP attracted support from a wide range of people, both urban and rural, liberal and conservative. In contrast, the current LDP strengthened its right-wing political character seeking for an adverse revision of the Constitution, and its support bases in local communities are weakening.

The comparison of election results clearly shows the decline of the LDP.

In the 1958 House of Representatives election, the LDP obtained votes from 44.17% of all eligible voters. In stark contrast, the party won a convincing victory in the general election in December last year with only 15.99% of all eligible voters casting their votes for the party.

The number of seats the LDP gained in the elections increased from 287 in 1958 to 294 in 2012, thanks to the imposition of the single-seat constituency system. Meanwhile, the allotted number of seats in the Lower House was reduced from 511 to 480 during the same period of time.

An influential member of a private think tank, the National Congress on 21st Century Japan, which promoted the single-seat election system, said that a political party which is losing its connection with the public has been awarded the majority of seats in the Diet, and scholars are questioning if the political system in Japan can be regarded as working well under such a situation.

The same person went on to say that though the LDP seems to be thriving, the nature of the party has not changed from what it was in 2009 when it was kicked out of power because of its failure to adjust its policies to meet public demands at that time. “The LDP domination of politics will not last long,” the person said.