Japan\u2019s ruling coalition appeared headed to an impressive win in national elections on Sunday, in what would represent at least a partial comeback for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.<\/p>\n
A victory would boost Abe\u2019s chances of winning another three-year term next September as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party. That could extend his premiership to 2021, giving him more time to try to win a reluctant public over to his longtime goal of revising Japan\u2019s postwar pacifist constitution.<\/p>\n
In the immediate term, a victory likely means a continuation of the policies Abe has pursued in the nearly five years since he took office in December 2012 \u2014 a hard line on North Korea, close ties with Washington, including defense, as well as a super-loose monetary policy and push for nuclear energy.<\/p>\n
Japanese media projected shortly after polls closed that Abe\u2019s LDP and its junior partner Komeito would win a clear majority and might even retain their two-thirds majority in the lower house of parliament.<\/p>\n
In early results, the ruling coalition had won 224 seats in the 465-seat lower house, and other parties had 91 seats, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported. Complete results may not be tallied until Monday.<\/p>\n
Abe\u2019s support ratings had fallen to around 30% in the summer, sparking talk that he might be vulnerable as leader of his party and prime minister.<\/p>\n
Abe dissolved the lower house less than a month ago, forcing the snap election. The lower house chooses the prime minister and is the more powerful of the two chambers of parliament.<\/p>\n
Analysts saw Abe\u2019s move as an attempt to solidify his political standing at a time when the opposition was in disarray and his support ratings had improved somewhat.<\/p>\n
His plan was briefly upstaged by the launch of a new opposition party by populist Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, but initial excitement faded and Koike herself decided not to run for parliament.<\/p>\n
NHK projected that her Party of Hope would win just 38 to 59 seats.<\/p>\n
Koike called the results \u201cvery severe\u201d in a televised interview from Paris, where she is attending a conference of mayors. She said some of her remarks might have been taken negatively by voters, and that she would take the blame.<\/p>\n
Projections indicated that another new party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, could outpoll the Party of Hope and become the biggest opposition grouping. The Constitutional Democrats are liberal-leaning, while both the Party of Hope and Abe\u2019s Liberal Democratic Party are more conservative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Japan\u2019s ruling coalition appeared headed to an impressive win in national elections on Sunday, in what would represent at least a partial comeback for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. A victory would boost Abe\u2019s chances of winning another three-year term next September as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party. That could extend his premiership to 2021, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[395,370],"class_list":["post-8233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-japanese-elections","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8235,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8233\/revisions\/8235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}