Shūgiin election 2009

The 2009 Shūgiin election was the 45th election to Shūgiin , the Japanese lower house. It took place on August 30, 2009. Prime Minister Tarō Asō had dissolved the Shūgiin on July 21, 2009.

The choice was the unchanged 480 seats of the Shūgiin; 300 were filled by simple majority voting in single- mandate constituencies, the remaining 180 MPs were elected via proportional representation in regional blocs. Since the Shūgiin is decisive in the choice of prime minister , a possible change of government depended on the outcome of the election. The governing coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Kōmeitō held a two-thirds majority of the seats since the previous Shūgiin election in 2005 .

On the same day, among other things, the gubernatorial election in Ibaraki and the mayoral election in Yokohama , the largest municipality in Japan, took place. Nine Supreme Court justices were also confirmed.

History and determination of the election date

Japanese Cabinet approval and disapproval rate since 2004, according to monthly NHK polls . The red line marks the last Shūgiin election in 2005.

The election took place after the resignation of the LDP chairman and Prime Minister Shinzō Abe in 2007 and Yasuo Fukuda in 2008, who had followed Jun'ichirō Koizumi, who was still in office in the last Shūgiin election in 2005 . Successor Tarō Asō had to accept a drop in his approval ratings in polls to below 30 percent after just three months, while he repeatedly ruled out early elections with reference to the need for a government capable of acting to combat the economic recession.

In 2009, the opposition also had to deal with a change in leadership: the previous chairman of the Democratic Party , Ichirō Ozawa , resigned in May 2009 after a donation scandal that had smoldered for several months. Yukio Hatoyama was elected as his successor by the Democratic MPs of both chambers of parliament and is Aso's challenger as opposition leader.

The discussion about the timing of possible new elections had led to resentment in the governing coalition. The Kōmeitō , which depends heavily on the support of the members of the Buddhist Sōka Gakkai , wanted to avoid the Shūgiin election coinciding with the elections for the Tokyo Prefecture Parliament on July 12, 2009. Tokyo is considered a stronghold of the Komeito, and the party feared because of its participation in government at the national level that its election results would be impaired if the elections are held simultaneously or in close succession. The Kōmeitō had to accept lost seats in the election for the Sangiin, the House of Lords, in July 2007, as did the LDP.

After internal party calls for resignation and the defeat of the LDP in the prefectural parliamentary elections in Tokyo on July 12, 2009, Asō announced the election date. A last attempt by LDP MPs around ex-General Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa from the Machimura faction , the largest faction in the LDP, to overthrow Asō before the Shūgiin was dissolved, failed.

Parties and candidates

Approval rates of the political parties since 2005 (polls by the NHK):
     LDP
     DPJ
     Kōmeitō
     KPJ
     SDP
     otherwise
     no party / rejection

The parties represented in parliament before the election were led by the following top candidates.

For the government coalition:
- Tarō Asō for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), party chairman and prime minister since September 2008
- Akihiro Ōta for the Kōmeitō , party chairman
- Hideo Watanabe for the 2008 founded Kaikaku Club ("Reform Club", English Japan Renaissance Party ), party chairman; the party supports the government in parliament without formal involvement in the coalition or cabinet positions.
For the opposition:
- Yukio Hatoyama for the Democratic Party (DPJ), party leader
- Kazuo Shii for the Communist Party of Japan (CPJ), Chairman of the Central Committee
- Mizuho Fukushima for the Social Democratic Party (SDP), party leader
- Tamisuke Watanuki for the New People's Party , party chairman
- Yasuo Tanaka for the New Japan Party , currently only represented in Sangiin.

Smaller parties such as the Okinawa Shakai Taishūtō ("Socialist Mass Party Okinawa"), a regional party in Okinawa Prefecture by Keiko Itokazu , the Minna no Tō ("Party of All") by Yoshimi Watanabe or the New Daichi Party by Muneo Suzuki had at the time of Choice of not the legal status of political parties (see Political Parties in Japan # Legal Regulations ). They only competed with individual candidates or regional lists. The religious community Kōfuku no Kagaku founded the kōfuku-jitsugen-tō ("Happiness Realization Party ") in May 2009 , which put up candidates in most of the 300 constituencies and lists in all eleven proportional electoral blocks .

A total of 1374 candidates ran, of which 1139 constituency candidates: 289 of the LDP, 271 of the DPJ, 8 of the Kōmeitō, 152 of the KPJ, 31 of the SDP, 9 of the New People's Party, 14 of the Minna no Tō, 1 of the Kaikaku Club, 2 of the New Party Japan, 288 of the Kōfuku-jitsugen-tō and 74 independents and others. A total of 653 constituency candidates ran simultaneously via a proportional representation list.

Election campaign

The official election campaign began on August 18, 2009.

At the end of July the major parties presented their election programs ( manifesuto ). The Democratic Party's demands included the introduction of 26,000 yen child benefit from 2011, a 25% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from 1990 to 2020, the abolition of the highway toll, the reduction of the influence of the ministerial bureaucracy and a ban on the Amakudari . In addition, it waived the earlier demand for the immediate end of the refueling operation of the marine self-defense forces in the Indian Ocean ( Operation Enduring Freedom ) and wanted to phase out the operation instead. The Liberal Democratic Party, which presented its manifesto a few days later, accused the Democrats of claiming that their demands could not be financed. The Liberal Democratic Party promised, among other things, annual economic growth of two percent, a reorganization of the tax system with an increase in value added tax , the abolition of prefectures in favor of a system of regions ( dō-shū-sei ) within eight to ten years, free kindergartens and preschools and clarification of the scandal surrounding lost pension entitlements by 2011. Greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by 15 percent by 2020 compared to 2005.

Voter turnout and result

For the Shūgiin election, a record number of over 10 million voters had used the opportunity since August 19 to cast their vote before election day.

The turnout was 69.28% for direct elections and 69.27% for proportional representation. It was the highest since the introduction of the trench selection system in 1996.

Political party		Constituencies			Proportional representation			Total seats	modification
Political party		be right	proportion of	Seats	be right	proportion of	Seats	Total seats	to the last election	on the composition before the election
	Liberal Democratic Party	27,301,982,074	38.6%	64	18.810.217	26.7%	55	119	−177	−181
	Kōmeitō	782,984,000	1.1%	0	8,054,007	11.4%	21st	21st	−10	−10
	Kaikaku Club	36,650,000	0.0%	0	58.141	0.0%	0	0	(0)	−1
	Democratic Party	33,475,334.854	47.4%	221	29,844,799	42.4%	87	308	+195	+193
	Communist Party of Japan	2,978,354.131	4.2%	0	4,943,886	7.0%	9	9	0	0
	Social Democratic Party	1,376,739,000	1.9%	3	3,006,160	4.2%	4th	7th	0	0
	Minna no Tō	615,244,000	0.8%	2	3.005.199	4.2%	3	5	(+5)	+1
	New People's Party	730,570,000	1.0%	3	1,219,767	1.7%	0	3	−1	−1
	New Japan Party	220,223,000	0.3%	1	528.171	0.7%	0	1	0	+1
	New party Daichi	1,077,543.003	1.5%	0	433.122	0.6%	1	1	0	0
	Other (*)	1,077,543.003	1.5%	0	466.786	0.6%	0	0	0	0
	Independent	1,986,055.873	2.8%	6th	-			6th	−12	0
total		70,581,679.935	100%	300	70.370.255	100%	180	480	0	+2 (vacancies)

(*) kōfuku-jitsugen-tō (“Happiness Realization Party”), shintō honshitsu (“New Party 'The Essentials'”), sekai keizai kyōdōtai-tō (“World Economic Community Party”), shintō furīweikurabu (“New Party Freeway Club”), nihon -sumairu-tō ("Japan Smile Party"), rinkaitō ("Forest and Sea Party")

Whole constituency votes are not necessarily “whole voters”. For an explanation of the decimal places, see Elections in Japan: "Proportional fraction votes" .

54 of the elected MPs were women.

In the Kinki proportional representation block , several seats were awarded in 2009, deviating from the original D'Hondt distribution according to share of votes, because the Democratic Party had nominated too few candidates (or too many simultaneous constituency candidates won their constituencies) Constituency as in the proportional representation, were disqualified because they did not achieve the necessary quorum of a tenth of the votes in their constituencies: The Democratic Party received two, the Minna no Tō one seat less than they would have been entitled to according to the distribution of votes, the Kōmeitō received one more mandate, the Liberal Democratic Party won two. In the Tōkai block , the Minna no Tō lost a seat to the Democratic Party for the same reason. In addition, the Democrats had no potential replacement in Kinki; and after Mitsue Kawakami's resignation in 2010, one seat was vacant until the next Shūgiin election in 2012 - proportional representation cannot be filled through by-elections.

Regional overview

Overview of won seats according to regional blocks
block	Constituencies			Proportional representation
block	DP	LDP	Others	DP	LDP	Kōmei	KPJ	Others
Hokkaidō	11	1	0	4th	2	1	0	Daichi 1
Tōhoku	19th	5	Independent 1	7th	4th	1	1	SDP 1
North Kantō	25th	4th	Minna 1, Independent 2	10	6th	2	1	Minna 1
Tokyo	21st	4th	0	8th	5	2	1	Minna 1
South Kantō	28	5	Minna 1	11	6th	2	1	SDP 1, Minna 1
Hokuriku - Shin'etsu	14th	6th	0	6th	4th	1	0	0
Tōkai	29	3	Independent 1	(11 →) 12	6th	2	1	Minna (1 →) 0
Kinki	41	5	SDP 1, NVP 1	(13 →) 11	(7 →) 9	(4 →) 5	3	SDP 1, Minna (1 →) 0
Chūgoku	8th	10	NVP 1, Independent 1	6th	4th	1	0	0
Shikoku	5	8th	0	3	2	1	0	0
Kyushu	20th	13	SDP 2, NVP 2, independent 1	9	7th	3	1	SDP 1
total	221	64	15th	87	55	21st	9	8th

Effects

Distribution of seats in 2009

A total of 480 seats

KPY : 9
SDP : 7
DPJ : 308
Nippon : 1
Kōmeitō : 21
Independent: 6
NVP : 3
Daichi : 1
Minna : 5
LDP : 119

After the very successful election in 2005, the LDP lost more than half of its seats and thus for the first time since 1993 participation in government - unlike in 1993, not through the resignation of MPs, but solely through a vote of the voters. The Democratic Party has the largest single-party majority in the Shūgiin in post-war history.

The democratic party leader Hatoyama was elected prime minister on September 16, 2009 in a special session of both chambers of parliament. He led coalition negotiations with the previous DPJ allies in the opposition, the Social Democratic Party and the New People's Party. Together, the three parties in the Sangiin , the House of Lords, have a slim majority. The New People's Party lost the seats of its Chairman Watanuki and General Secretary Hisaoki Kamei and was led by its new Chairman Shizuka Kamei in the coalition talks. The negotiations were concluded on September 9th with the formal signing of the coalition agreement. Social Democrats and New People's Party are each represented in the new cabinet with a ministerial post by their party leaders.

The LDP chairman Asō and the three most important politicians in the LDP party executive committee ( tō-san'yaku : general secretary, chairman of the executive council, chairman of the political research council) announced their resignation on election evening. The Asō cabinet resigned on September 16, before Hatoyama's election. In the election of the Prime Minister, the LDP MPs cast their votes for the chairman of the General Assembly of LDP MPs from both chambers, Masatoshi Wakabayashi ; some MPs had previously spoken out against voting for the outgoing chairman Asō. The election of the party leader took place on September 28th, the election campaign began on September 18th. Sadakazu Tanigaki prevailed clearly against his younger competitors Tarō Kōno and Yasutoshi Nishimura .

The chairman of the Kōmeitō, Akihiro Ōta, lost his seat and resigned. His successor as party chairman was Natsuo Yamaguchi .

The Kaikaku Club lost its only seat; the four MPs in the Sangiin agreed after the election with the LDP to form a joint parliamentary group.

The inequality of the election , a maximum disparity of 2.3 in the number of eligible voters in the Shugiin constituencies , has been approved by the Supreme Court declared in March 2011 to be unconstitutional. 2009 was the first election with unconstitutional constituencies since the introduction of the trench voting system and single-mandate constituencies in 1994.

literature

Ikuo Kabashima , Gill Steel: Changing Politics in Japan. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2010. ISBN 978-0-8014-7600-6 .

Individual evidence

^ Lower house dissolved for general election. Aso says seeks 'a mandate from the public'. In: The Japan Times . July 21, 2009, Retrieved July 21, 2009 (Japanese).
↑ Masami Itō: Aso reportedly won't call election this year. Market crisis trumps political wars: sources. In: The Japan Times. October 29, 2008, accessed January 4, 2009 .
↑ Japan PM rules out snap election. In: BBC News. December 24, 2008, accessed January 4, 2009 .
↑ google.com/hostednews/afp ( Memento from January 24, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
↑ Masami Itō: Key challenge: Keeping New Komeito on board. In: The Japan Times. August 2, 2008, accessed January 4, 2009 .
↑ Agence France Presse, May 25, 2009: Japan's 'Happy Science' sect launches political party ( Memento of September 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
^ DPJ platform vows to weaken bureaucrats. Diet members would craft policies; child allowance in '11. In: The Japan Times . July 28, 2009, accessed August 1, 2009 .
↑ Aso raps DPJ as inconsistent. In: The Japan Times . July 28, 2009, accessed August 1, 2009 .
↑ As well as the LDP policy platform. Analysts criticize far-sighted vows as lacking detail, proper funding. In: The Japan Times . August 1, 2009, accessed August 1, 2009 .
↑ Record-high 10.9 million voters cast early ballots. In: The Japan Times . August 30, 2009, accessed August 30, 2009 .
↑ 民主、比例近畿Ｂで名簿登載者不足… 議席は他党に . In: Yomiuri Shimbun Online. August 31, 2009. Retrieved October 25, 2017 (Japanese).
^ DPJ, two allies agree to form coalition. But stubborn SDP may yield 'mix of oil and water'. In: The Japan Times . September 10, 2009, accessed August 10, 2011 .
↑ 麻生首相が退陣表明. In: Yomiuri Online. August 30, 2009, Retrieved August 30, 2009 (Japanese).
↑ LDP picks stand-in for Diet vote. In: The Japan Times . September 9, 2009, accessed August 10, 2011 .
↑ LDP members irked by having to vote for Aso. In: The Japan Times . September 2, 2009, accessed September 8, 2009 .
↑ 09 年衆院選, １票の格差「違憲状態」… 最高裁 . In: Yomiuri Shimbun . March 23, 2011, archived from the original on March 24, 2011 ; Retrieved March 23, 2011 (Japanese).

Web links

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications : Candidates, Turnout, and Result at the 45th Shūgiin and Supreme Court Judge Confirmation (Japanese)
ザ・選挙 : Cards, Incumbents, Candidates, Messages, and Election Programs for the 45th Shūgiin Election (Japanese)

[1] Lower house dissolved for general election. Aso says seeks 'a mandate from the public'. In: The Japan Times . July 21, 2009, Retrieved July 21, 2009 (Japanese).

[2] Masami Itō: Aso reportedly won't call election this year. Market crisis trumps political wars: sources. In: The Japan Times. October 29, 2008, accessed January 4, 2009 .

[3] Japan PM rules out snap election. In: BBC News. December 24, 2008, accessed January 4, 2009 .

[4] .com/hostednews/afp ( Memento from January 24, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )

[5] Masami Itō: Key challenge: Keeping New Komeito on board. In: The Japan Times. August 2, 2008, accessed January 4, 2009 .

[6] Agence France Presse, May 25, 2009: Japan's 'Happy Science' sect launches political party ( Memento of September 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive )

[7] DPJ platform vows to weaken bureaucrats. Diet members would craft policies; child allowance in '11. In: The Japan Times . July 28, 2009, accessed August 1, 2009 .

[8] Aso raps DPJ as inconsistent. In: The Japan Times . July 28, 2009, accessed August 1, 2009 .

[9] As well as the LDP policy platform. Analysts criticize far-sighted vows as lacking detail, proper funding. In: The Japan Times . August 1, 2009, accessed August 1, 2009 .

[10] Record-high 10.9 million voters cast early ballots. In: The Japan Times . August 30, 2009, accessed August 30, 2009 .

[11] 民主、比例近畿Ｂで名簿登載者不足… 議席は他党に . In: Yomiuri Shimbun Online. August 31, 2009. Retrieved October 25, 2017 (Japanese).

[12] DPJ, two allies agree to form coalition. But stubborn SDP may yield 'mix of oil and water'. In: The Japan Times . September 10, 2009, accessed August 10, 2011 .

[13] 麻生首相が退陣表明. In: Yomiuri Online. August 30, 2009, Retrieved August 30, 2009 (Japanese).

[14] LDP picks stand-in for Diet vote. In: The Japan Times . September 9, 2009, accessed August 10, 2011 .

[15] LDP members irked by having to vote for Aso. In: The Japan Times . September 2, 2009, accessed September 8, 2009 .

[16] 09 年衆院選, １票の格差「違憲状態」… 最高裁 . In: Yomiuri Shimbun . March 23, 2011, archived from the original on March 24, 2011 ; Retrieved March 23, 2011 (Japanese).