Japan 2021 Tokyo Metropolitan assembly elections (July) and Lower House Election Oct 31st

[Tintrlvr]

静岡(Shizuoka) winner by city/township/village.  The East (LDP)-West (Opposition) divide is strark.

This is really an urban-rural divide. The eastern part of Shizuoka-ken is rural but the western part is the cities of Shizuoka and Hamamatsu.

[Tintrlvr]

Over-70s are the most pro-LDP, but 60-70 year olds the most anti? How does that work exactly??

My understanding is that a lot of it has to do with the crash in the early 1990s. People who are now in their 50s and 60s were affected the worst by the crash happening just as they were starting their careers and have consistently much less wealth and lower peak career achievement than people in their 70s and older, many of whom made fortunes in the 1980s. The LDP is also especially inclined to cater to the interests of pensioners, and not so many Japanese retire before 70.

The more questionable idea is that the young people are especially inclined to support the LDP. It's true that those 18-29 year olds who vote are less anti-LDP than, say 50-59-year-olds, mainly due to nationalist issues like amending the Constitution. But turnout among young voters is absolutely dreadful in Japan (much worse than in any Western democracy), and it's unclear that the voters would be representative of the non-voters if the non-voters actually started to turn out.

[Tintrlvr]

Turnout by age in 2017, for reference.

30% for 20-24 is almost surprisingly high.
Why the huge drop from 75-79 to 80-84?
(It's almost as bad as the DPJ's seat fall from 2009 to 2012 )

One theory.  If the 80-84 bloc is really 80+ so many people in this bloc will not be able to vote for medical reasons.  Also, the reality is that some of the 80+ people are already dead.  This seems to be a scam in Japan where the families of very old people would not announce their death when they died so they can continue to collect the national pension payment (up to $8000 a person a year) on behalf of their elderly parent.  Since voting is in person (including early voting) then turnout of this group will be artificially low.  

Japan is also not very good about purging its voter and other statistical rolls for the deceased generally. But I think the main factor is that Japan has no ability to vote by mail at all unless you have a very specific dispensation granted extremely sparingly to only the most severely disabled, which means that many mobility-impaired elderly voters just don't get to vote.

There was some discussion about expanding mail-in voting earlier this year, but I'm not sure whether it ended up happening. Even then, the discussion was mainly around whether those who were quarantining for COVID/exposure at the time of the election could get a special allowance to vote by mail just this one time or whether it was just too bad, so sad, they can't vote. So the Japanese attitude to mail voting is unlikely to change radically any time soon.