Japan 2012

[jaichind]

JRP begin second place is less revelent since it will only run 141 candidates out of 300 districts so this level of support will not translate into a lot of seats.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Japan’s LDP Leads in Latest Nikkei Public Opinion Poll

(Bloomberg) -- Opposition Liberal Democratic Party leads with 23%, followed by Japan Restoration Party at 15% and current governing Democratic Party of Japan with 13%, Nikkei reports.
LDP down 2pts from Nov. 16-18 Nikkei poll
 Japan Restoration Party overtakes governing DPJ after merger with party of Shintaro Ishihara
 Poll conducted Nov. 26-28 surveyed 1,406 households with responses from 865 voters
 

[jaichind]

Latest polls seems to show a wipeout for DPJ.  The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, based upon its own numbers, predicts the DPJ on a course to winning only aroung 80 seats while the Mainichi Shimbun, looking at the data from Kyodo, predicts the DPJ will win only around 70 seats.  Main reason as I stated before is that the anti-LDP vote will be split between many parties as opposed to being concentrated on DPJ in 2009.  I think it is now within the relem of possibility that LDP-NKP will capture a 2/3 majority of 320 seats plus.

[jaichind]

NKP should get around 32 seats.  LDP will most likely get a majority on its own and even come close to matching its 2005 result of 296 seats in which case LDP+NKP will get a 2/3 majority or come very close to it.  LDP will not get the 77 PR block vote seats like in 2005 but will make it up in the FPTP seats.  There is a bold assumption I am making in my equally bold prediction.  That the undecided which is often up to 50% of the voters will either not vote or split among the various non LDP-NKP parties.

So the LDP gets a small majority?

[jaichind]

This poll has LDP at 295 and NKP at 30.  Similar to my prediction that NKP would be 31 and that with LDP will be close to and even beyond 2/3 majority at 320.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LDP likely to win nearly 300 seats in general election
TOKYO, Dec. 13 Kyodo
The Liberal Democratic Party led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is continuing its strong run heading into Sunday's lower house general election and is on course to win close to 300 seats in the 480-seat chamber, a Kyodo News survey showed Wednesday.
The main opposition and its ally the New Komeito party could together secure more than 300 seats in the House of Representatives, according to the telephone survey conducted over two days through Wednesday covering around 63,200 eligible voters in 150 selected single-seat constituencies out of 300.
The projections for the remaining 150 constituencies were made based on additional information gathered by Kyodo.
The ruling Democratic Party of Japan, which swept to power in the previous lower house election in 2009 and put an end to the LDP's almost continuous rule for more than 50 years, is expected to fall far behind the LDP with only around 60 seats, compared with the current strength of 230 seats, the survey showed.
The Japan Restoration Party, one of the so-called third forces challenging the DPJ and the LDP, is expected to get less than 50 seats, according to the survey.
The party was founded by outspoken Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto and is currently led by former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, known for his hawkish diplomatic stance.
In the poll, however, 43.3 percent of the respondents said they had not yet decided on who to vote for in the single-seat constituency contests and 40.4 percent said they remained undecided
on which party to vote for in the proportional representation regional blocks, where 180 seats will be determined.
If the LDP wins as many seats as the poll suggests, Abe would return as Japan's next premier, ousting Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda who heads the DPJ.
Among other third-force parties, the newly formed Tomorrow Party of Japan led by Shiga Gov. Yukiko Kada, which is committed to phasing out atomic power plants within 10 years following the 2011 crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, is seen winning around 15 seats and Your Party a little over 10 seats, the survey showed.
Abe's party could win a total of around 295 seats or more in the single-seat electoral districts and under the proportional representation system, while its ally New Komeito is likely to win close to 30 seats, according to the survey.
The Japanese Communist Party may fail to retain its preelection strength of nine seats. The Social Democratic Party may only win one or two seats, the survey said.

[jaichind]

I was thinking what the PRC was up to when they flew a surveillance plane over the disputed islands which only helps the Hawks cause in the upcoming election tomorrow.  From a game theory point of view I think it makes sense.  What Beijing is counting on is that the basic economic balance and interests on both sides will make for a mending of releationship between PRC and Japan and the current surge toward the nationalist jingoism in Japan is mostly an election ploy.  If so then the worst case scenerio for the PRC is a Japanese middle of the road government in Japan with declining political clout and a powerful hawkish opposition pushing it into taking anti-PRC moves to avoid losing more ground.  A much better situation is a powerful and politically invulernable hawkish Japanese government which does not need to worry about its base and think more about economic costs of a poor relationship with PRC.

With this in mind this flight of a plane from the PRC makes a lot of sense as it would push the hawkish vote toward LDP-NKP helping them get to a 2/3 majority without needing the even more hawkish Ishihara and his JRP.  What the PRC wants is the piviot party being the NKP and not JRP.  One thing that is not spoken is that NKP is quite dovish when it comes to relationship with PRC but it is keeping that view quite during this election where the PRC is quite unpopular in Japan.  The LDP-NKP strategy should be to capture a 2/3 majority by lumping various voting blocks togeather and sweep the 300 FPTP seats.  The blocks are the LDP personal vote of various LDP candidate fiefdoms, the LDP nationalist vote, LDP rural vote, and NKP vote (which should be good for 8-10%) and get around 38-40% of the vote assuming the pro-DPJ reform vote does not turn out given their disappointment over the last 3 years in a low turnout election.  This latest act by PRC will further consolidate the LDP nationalist vote and I assume that was the intention of PRC in doing this.

[jaichind]

There is a reason for this.  In Japan, individual politicians are not allowed to buy any time whatsoever for media, for TV advertising. They're not allowed to buy space in newspapers or time on the radio.  Every candidate for public office is given a certain amount of free time for his TV advertising, or radio advertising, or newspaper advertisements, but they are very restrictive in terms of what kinds of advertising he can engage in down to restrictions on whether the politician is allowed to sit or stand, use props, and other things.  The reasons for these restrictions in the Japanese election law supposedly go back to a desire to make elections fair — not to allow people who have more money to have more advantages than candidates who don't have money, to give every candidate exactly the same opportunities that every other candidate has.  Of course this does not really work becuase the candidate often have support groups which he builds up with money and delivers the votes.  So the only thing they personally can do is to run around in a van blasting out noises the what you see in Youtube below.  Sometimes it just yells out the candidates name over and over again, like "Tanaka, Tanaka, Tanaka ...."

Follow-up question - how common are these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MCYdViBZF8

[jaichind]

None I know of.  http://www.jiji.com/jc/election?g=2012syuin&l=top is very good but that is in Japanese.  Being that I am Chinese I can read about 90% of that page when it comes to the results and I can figure out the rest.  I guess http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ is a one place you can look for results in English but it will run behind real time.  I believe polls close 7pm which would be 7am EST which is when I plan to wake up and watch results online.

When do polls close? Do we know yet of a good site to get results for those of us who don't speak Japanese (or perhaps one in Japanese with obvious color-coding)?

[jaichind]

With 133 FPTP seats counted projected it is

LDP            110
NKP               6
DPJ               5
Future Party   1
JRP                2
Your Party      3
Independent   1

Wow.  What a wipeout.  LDP on its own might get 2/3 majority.

[jaichind]

With 138 FPTP seats counted projected it is

LDP            117
NKP               7
DPJ               6
Future Party   1
JRP                2
Your Party      3
SDP               1
Independent   1

Only ray of hope for DPJ is that most of these results are from the most rural areas which are LDP fiefdoms.  No results for urban area like Tokyo where DPJ tends to be stronger.  I suspect DPJ will get wiped out in places like Tokyo as well.

[jaichind]

actually NHK has more aggressive results 

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/senkyo/

They have

LDP            217
NKP             24
DPJ              33
Future Party   4
JRP              34
Your Party    11
SDP               1
NP-Daichi       1
Communist     4
Independent   2

So in addition to DPJ, Ozawa's Future Party also got wiped out.  So united they stand (DPJ and Ozawa) and divided they fall.

[jaichind]

Ah.  I see the difference between
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/senkyo/ and jiji

All NHK does is to project the PR seats based on very limited returns so far.  I suspect those numbers will jump around a lot as vote countes come in.   

[jaichind]

JRP seems to sweeping Osaka.

[jaichind]

They have

LDP            234
NKP             24
DPJ              36
Future Party   5
JRP              35
Your Party    11
SDP               1
NP-Daichi       1
Communist     4
Independent   2

DPJ inches ahead of JRP

[jaichind]

LDP-NKP sweeping all regions with respect to Osaka where JRP seems to be winning most of the seats.  LDP-NKP seems to be sweeping Hokkaido as well which really speaks to how badly DPJ is doing.  Even in 2005 landslide DPJ did well in Hokkaido.

[jaichind]

Looking at places left to report I really do not see how DPJ gets over 60 seats.  This means 2/3 majority for sure for LDP-NKP.

[jaichind]

Looking at the PR vote coming in so far for areas that have significant votes tells how the LDP-NKP cruised their way to victory.  It is mostly the same way I have indicated before will take place.  Take the PR region of 東北 or Northeast.  The PR vote with 19% of the results in are

LDP           29.1%
DPJ            20.0%
JRP            14.0%
NKP             9.3%
Future         9.0%
Your Party   6.7%
Communist  6.5%
SDP              3.4%

Note that LDP+NKP has 38.4% and if replicated across the in the same region in the FPTP votes will pretty much win them most of the seats since DPJ and JRP strength are evenly split between the two.

[jaichind]

LDP+NKP has 275 out of 377 projected so far.  That is 72% of the seats. 

[jaichind]

Exactly.  If this election is run under the 1947-1993 election system I am not even sure LDP will get a majority let alone this 2/3 majority.

So a majority much inflated by the voting system, then?

[jaichind]

Just as an example, based on current trends I suspect LDP+NKP will get around 40%-45% of the PR vote.  In 1979 election under the old system, LDP got 44.6% of the vote but failed to get a majority by only taking 248 out of 511 seats.

[jaichind]

LDP            259
NKP             26
DPJ              39
PNP                1 (DPJ ally)
Future Party   5
JRP              38
Your Party    11
SDP               1
NP-Daichi       1
Communist     4
Independent   4

Neck to neck between DPJ and JRP on who will take second place.

[jaichind]

Are the seats left to call (90 if my math's right) PR or FPTP?

About 30 PR and 60 FPTP.  Note that PR votes are coming in very slow so it is hard to call the rest of them until a lot of more votes come in.

[jaichind]

LDP is up to 212 wins and NKP 8 wins in FPTP with a lot more not projected yet.  In the 2005 Koizumi landslide LDP won 219 and NKP 8.  LDP is on course to surpass the Koizumi landslude of 2005.  Note that LDP+NKP got 51.5% of the PR vote in 2005.  Very little chance of LDP+NKP getting that.  They will end up in the low 40s.  So bigger win for LDP+NKP than 2005 with a lot less votes.  And it is a low turnout election on top of that.  I am certain those that did not turn out are demoralized floating DPJ voters.

[jaichind]

Noda resigns as head of DPJ. 

[jaichind]

The breakup of New Party Daichi and DPJ doomed DPJ in Hokkaido.  If they kept that alliance they could have stopped LDP+NKP there.  Instead it is a complete LDP+NKP sweep there.

[jaichind]

In Osaka it is JRP 11 vs LDP+NKP 7 with 1 still not in.  11 out of 13 FPTP seats JRP won so far is in Osaka, as expected.