Sangiin election 1998

Distribution of seats after the election

The 1998 Sangiin election , formally the “18th Ordinary election of Sangiin MPs ”( Japanese 第 18 回 参議院 議員 通常 選 挙 , dai-jūhachi-kai Sangiin giin tsūjōsseyo ), to the Japanese council house ( Sangiin ) , the upper house (jōin) of the national parliament ( Kokkai ) took place on July 12th In 1998.

In September 1997, Prime Minister Ryūtarō Hashimoto was re-elected unopposed for a second term as party chairman after he had succeeded in restoring sole government of the LDP in his first term. The party's declared electoral goal was to win back the majority in the Sangiin. The DPJ, formed in 1996, had merged with three smaller opposition parties in March and ran for the first time in Sangiin elections. With its majority, the opposition was able to hinder the government's work; in June, a vote of no confidence in the government failed until the Shūgiin .

The main topic of the election campaign was the continued weak economy: The government had to justify itself, among other things, because of the hesitant reform course and a VAT increase in the previous year.

The turnout was 58.84% for direct elections and 58.83% for proportional representation, recovering from the record low of 1995 (44%). The electoral law had previously been changed to keep polling stations open until eight o'clock and to facilitate postal voting.

Political party		Not an option	Constituencies			Proportional representation			Elected in 2001	Composition according to the choice
			be right	proportion of	Seats	be right	proportion of	Seats
	Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)	59	17,033,851	30.45%	30th	14,128,719	25.17%	14th	44	103
	Democratic Party (DPJ)	20th	9,063,939	16.20%	15th	12,209,685	21.75%	12	27	47
	Communist Party of Japan (CPJ)	8th	8,758,759	15.66%	7th	8,195,078	14.60%	8th	15th	23
	Kōmei	13	1,843,479	3.30%	2	7,748,301	13.80%	7th	9	22nd
	Social Democratic Party (SDP)	8th	2,403,649	4.30%	1	4,370,763	7.79%	4th	5	13
	Liberal Party	6th	980.249	1.75%	1	5,207,813	9.28%	5	6th	12
	New party sakigake	3	15,852,135	28.34%	0	3,492,073	6.22%	0	0	3
	Liberal League ( Jiyū Rengō )	1			0			0	0	1
	Independent and other	8th			20th			0	20th	28
total		126	55,936,064	100%	76	56.137.023	100%	50	126	252

The LDP won 15 of the 24 single-seat constituencies. The opposition parties, however, gained particularly in the multi-mandate electoral districts; in most of the multi-mandate constituencies, the LDP had nominated two candidates and remained without a seat in a number of them.

1998 constituency results

Election winners by nominating party: Liberal Democratic Party Democratic Party Communist Party of Japan Kōmei Liberal Party Social Democratic Party No In multi-mandate constituencies from left to right with descending numbers of votes										Hokkaidō 
									Aomori 
									Akita 	Iwate 
								Niigata 	Yamagata 	Miyagi 
							Ishikawa 	Toyama 	Tochigi 	Fukushima 
						Fukui 	Nagano 	Gunma 	Saitama 	Ibaraki 
		Shimane 	Tottori 	Hyogo 	Kyoto 	Shiga 	Gifu 	Yamanashi 	Tokyo 	Chiba 
		Yamaguchi 	Hiroshima 	Okayama 	Osaka 	Nara 	Aichi 	Shizuoka 	Kanagawa 
saga 	Fukuoka 					Wakayama 	Mie 
Nagasaki 	Kumamoto 	Ōita 		Ehime 	Kagawa 	[Nationwide] proportional representation constituency (50 seats) 14th 12 8th 7th 5 4th
	Kagoshima 	Miyazaki 		Kochi 	Tokushima 
Okinawa 

Effects

The LDP lost 15 seats and moved further away from an independent upper house majority. Prime Minister Hashimoto announced his resignation the day after the election. In the election for party chairmanship on July 21, Keizo Obuchi prevailed against Seiroku Kajiyama and Jun'ichiro Koizumi as successors.

The DPJ, chaired by Naoto Kan , gained nine seats and consolidated its leadership role in the opposition. The CPJ also gained nine seats and became the third largest party for the first time.

In autumn 1998 the LDP began coalition negotiations, which resulted in the formation of a coalition cabinet with the Liberal Party in January 1999 , which meant that the government was only a few seats away from an absolute majority in the Sangiin. In October 1999, the Kōmeitō's entry into the coalition also formally ended the “twisted parliament” , and the government again had safe legislative majorities in both chambers.

Web links

• Official election statistics from Sōmushō (Japanese)
• Inter-Parliamentary Union : Japan: Parliamentary Elections Sangiin, 1998 (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sangiin : 第 18 回 参議院 議員 通常 選 挙 結果 (“Result of the 18th regular election of members of the Sangiin”; PDF).