2010 Japanese House of Councillors election

2010 Japanese House of Councillors election

← 2007 July 11, 2010 2013 →
121 of the 242 seats in the House of Councillors 122 seats needed for a majority
First party Second party Third party   Leader Naoto Kan Sadakazu Tanigaki Natsuo Yamaguchi Party Democratic Liberal Democratic Komeito Last election 109 seats, 39.5% 83 seats, 28.1% 20 seats, 13.2% Seats after 106 84 19 Seat change 3 1 1 Popular vote 18,450,139 14,071,671 7,639,433 Percentage 31.6% 24.1% 13.1% Swing 7.9pp 4.0pp 0.1pp   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Yoshimi Watanabe Kazuo Shii Mizuho Fukushima Party Your Communist Social Democratic Last election – 7 seats, 7.5% 5 seats, 4.5% Seats after 11 6 4 Seat change New 1 1 Popular vote 7,943,649 3,563,556 2,242,735 Percentage 13.6% 6.1% 3.8% Swing New 1.4pp 0.7pp   Seventh party Eighth party Ninth party   Leader Takeo Hiranuma Shizuka Kamei Yōichi Masuzoe Party Sunrise People's New New Renaissance Last election – 4 seats, 2.2% – Seats after 3 3 2 Seat change New 3 New Popular vote 1,232,207 1,000,036 1,172,395 Percentage 2.1% 1.7% 2.0% Swing New 0.5pp New
Constituency and proportional representation (bottom right) election result
President of the House of Councillors before election Satsuki Eda Democratic Elected President of the House of Councillors Takeo Nishioka Democratic

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House of Councillors elections were held in

The result of the election was declared on July 12, 2010. The ruling DPJ lost many of its seats and the opposition LDP gained more seats in comparison to the last election, held in 2007. Your Party performed well in this election, while the DPJ's junior coalition partner, the People's New Party, performed poorly.^[10]

Party		National			Constituency			Seats
		Votes	%	Seats	Votes	%	Seats	Not up	Won	Total after	+/–
	Democratic Party of Japan	18,450,139	31.56	16	22,756,000	38.97	28	62	44	106	–3
	Liberal Democratic Party	14,071,671	24.07	12	19,496,083	33.38	39	33	51	84	+1
	Your Party	7,943,649	13.59	7	5,977,391	10.24	3	1	10	11	New
	New Komeito Party	7,639,433	13.07	6	2,265,818	3.88	3	10	9	19	–1
	Japanese Communist Party	3,563,557	6.10	3	4,256,400	7.29	0	3	3	6	–1
	Social Democratic Party	2,242,735	3.84	2	602,684	1.03	0	2	2	4	–1
	Sunrise Party	1,232,207	2.11	1	328,475	0.56	0	2	1	3	New
	New Renaissance Party	1,172,395	2.01	1	625,431	1.07	0	1	1	2	New
	People's New Party	1,000,036	1.71	0	167,555	0.29	0	3	0	3	–1
	Happiness Realization Party	229,026	0.39	0	291,810	0.50	0	1	0	1	New
	Spirit of Japan Party	493,620	0.84	0	296,697	0.51	0	0	0	0	New
	Women's Party	414,963	0.71	0				0	0	0	0
	Other parties				22,150	0.04	0	0	0	0	–
	Independents				1,314,313	2.25	0	3	0	3	–9
Total		58,453,431	100.00	48	58,400,807	100.00	73	121	121	242	0
Valid votes		58,453,996	97.02		58,400,808	96.92
Invalid/blank votes		1,793,766	2.98		1,853,292	3.08
Total votes		60,247,762	100.00		60,254,100	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		104,029,135	57.91		104,029,135	57.92
Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, National Diet

DPJ nomination strategy in multi-member districts

DPJ secretary-general Ichirō Ozawa had decided on an offensive strategy for nominating candidates in multi-member districts (MMDs): The DPJ was to nominate two candidates in all MMDs with the exceptions of Niigata where an SDP-affiliated independent incumbent was in the race and Fukuoka where a PNP incumbent sought reelection. This strategy was reaffirmed after Ozawa's resignation in June 2010^[11] even though the DPJ's support rate had significantly fallen by then and winning both seats in a SNTV two-member district requires a very high margin in terms of party votes and an equal distribution of votes on the two candidates.

The strategy failed: all two-member districts split seats evenly between DPJ and LDP in 2010. In some districts the party even risked losing both seats due to vote splitting,^[12] a danger that did not materialize in the election result.

The LDP on the other hand nominated only one candidate per MMD – exceptions being Miyagi, Chiba and Tokyo –, thus concentrating all LDP votes on one candidate.

The election results in MMDs gave 20 seats to the DPJ, 18 to the LDP, three to the Kōmeitō and three to Your Party. The only districts where the DPJ won two seats and an advantage in seats over the LDP were

Part of the LDP victory were the results in the 29 single-member districts where the DPJ received roughly 7 million votes winning eight districts while the LDP received 8.25 million votes and 21 seats, among them seven pickups compared to the pre-election composition of the chamber:

• Aomori, Akita, Tottori and Nagasaki from the DPJ
• Kagawa and Tokushima from the NRP, both from former LDP members, and
• Tochigi which had been a two-member district until 2010 with seats held by DPJ and NRP.

The LDP also gained seven additional seats in two-member districts, but exclusively seats it had previously lost by party switchovers or resignations:

• in
  Hokkaidō
  from the Sunrise Party,
• in Niigata where Naoki Tanaka had switched parties together with his wife Makiko from an SDP-affiliated independent,
• in Gifu from an ex-LDP independent,
• in Nagano a vacant seat previously held by the LDP,
• in Hiroshima and Fukuoka from the PNP and
• only in Shizuoka directly from the DPJ where the Democrats had held both seats up because of the resignation of Yukiko Sakamoto in 2009 and the DPJ's victory in the resulting by-election.

The vote in the districts with three (Saitama, Chiba,

If compared to the 2004 election when the same class of Councillors was last elected, the LDP only gained five prefectural district seats and lost three seats in the nationwide proportional representation.

By prefecture

Elected candidates in bold

Notes:

• All incumbents not running for re-election in their prefectural electoral district are counted as retirements even if they ran in the nationwide proportional representation
• Miyagi is counted as an LDP hold because Ichikawa was an LDP member and remained with the LDP parliamentary group up to the election. He ran as an independent after failing to gain the party's official nomination in Miyagi.

Proportional preference vote

Notable defeated PR candidates included former Tokyo Metropolitan Assemblyman Tarō Hatoyama (NRP, 23,944 votes, rank 2), former Olympic gymnast Yukio Iketani (DPJ, 54,155 votes, rank 27), former Giants manager Tsuneo Horiuchi (LDP, 101,840 votes, rank 13), former Giants infielder Kiyoshi Nakahata (SPJ, 111,597 votes, rank 2) and pro wrestler Osamu Nishimura (PNP, 34,561 votes, rank 3).

References