Comment by theanphibian

September 19, 2008 @ 11:14 pm

Question!

So, in the last House of Councilors election, the DPJ nearly won a verifiable majority. But now you’re claiming (probably correctly, you know your stuff) that the LDP would likely still have their majority after the October lower house election.

What changed? Was Abe that bad? Is Aso going to be that good? Why doesn’t the DPJ stand to win bigger? I mean, in the last election the DPJ took 40 seats and the LDP took 23. It just seems extreme that the LDP would still take a majority of seats this time.

Comment by Ken Worsley

September 20, 2008 @ 12:56 am

Theanphibian,

You are correct in saying that the last election was for the House of Councilors. The next election, however, will be for the House of Representatives, or the lower house.

Before the 2007 election, the HOC was already somewhat close. The DPJ won enough seats in that election to take the majority.

The HOR - the lower house - is not even close. The LDP and New Komeito have over 2/3 of the seats. It would take a massive landslide for the DPJ to overtake the LDP in terms of the number of seats.

Also, bear in mind that while there are 242 seats in the HOC (the upper house), there are 480 in the lower. In 2005, the LDP won 296 of these seats, with the DPJ taking 113. This means the DPJ has a huge hurdle to overcome if it hopes to take a majority.

Thus, the expectation is that the LDP will lose seats, and 16 lost seats would mean that the LDP/New Komeito coalition would lose the 2/3 supermajority.

However, in order for the DPJ to take control of over half the Diet, the LDP and New Komeito would have to lose 81 seats. This is a huge number, and I do not see it happening.

Comment by Ken Worsley

September 20, 2008 @ 1:03 am

Theanphibian,

Here’s a breakdown of current Diet seats in the lower house, since they are now different to the 2005 election results:

LDP: 304
NK: 31

DPJ: 114
JCP: 9
Independent: 9
SDP: 7
PNP: 6

Comment by theanphibian

September 20, 2008 @ 3:14 am

hmm, I see what you saying about how the DPJ has more ground to cover.

But doesn’t the HOC election put up ALL seats for election? The HOR is half elected each time, so that’s more of a slow change lagging the trend.

Like you guys keep saying, the massive LDP majority in the HOC is from the Koizumi legacy. Correct me if I’m wrong, but they will basically be defending every one of those seats in an election next month (all 480 of them). Now, that doesn’t say anything about whether they’re secure or not. Certainly, in any election the incumbent has the high ground, so because of their current majority the LDP has a strong statistical edge.

It is certainly (mathematically, rule-wise) possible that the LDP could hand over 200 seats in this election and nearly completely fall from power. I guess what you were saying in this podcast is that it’s just vastly more likely that they’d loose something like 50 or 75 seats. But that’s still 100% up to the will of the voters, right?

Pardon the wild numbers, I haven’t closely followed this before, so I don’t have a sense for what would be a HUGE number or a small number. I just thought to myself “well if they have a 20% approval rating… they might loose all but 20% of the seats up for election” Only problem is, no one else has better ratings

Comment by Garrett DeOrio

September 20, 2008 @ 2:08 pm

Only problem is, no one else has better ratings

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there.

My guess would be that the LDP, having just appointed a new PM, will see a larger bump in approval ratings coming into the election. On top of that, the LDP still has a larger, more established network of party organizations, which will probably save them from annihilation, especially in the rural districts, where votes carry relatively more weight.

Comment by Ken Worsley

September 21, 2008 @ 7:06 pm

Theanphibian,

But doesn’t the HOC election put up ALL seats for election? The HOR is half elected each time, so that’s more of a slow change lagging the trend.

The situation is the opposite. HOR (lower house) members are elected to four year terms, which can be shortened if the lower house is dissolved.

HOC (upper house) members are elected to 6 year terms, with half of the seats up for election every 3 years.

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September 23, 2008 @ 1:49 am

[…] As I noted in the most recent edition of Seijigiri over at Trans-Pacific Radio, on September 16 Lehman Brothers failed to make a 121 billion yen payment to the Ministry of Finance for 2 year bonds that it had agreed to purchase at auction. In addition, another 288.5 billion yen in 5 and 10 year government bonds were bid for but never paid for. The Ministry of Finance, however, apparently does not plan on making any addition bond issuances, as the non-payment for these bonds amounts to about 0.3% of this year’s total planned issue. […]

Comment by cal hobbs

September 25, 2008 @ 12:12 am

Murakawa probably accounts for a big portion of the 93.4% of buyers of Louis Vuitton.

Comment by Ken Worsley

September 30, 2008 @ 3:09 pm

And it now looks as though the lower house won’t be divided until at least Oct 6, as they’ve apparently pushed back an election to try to get the supplemental budget through.