Japan Lower House election - Dec 14, 2014

[jaichind]

These results mean that PLP is 1 seat short of being able to form a Parliamentary group.  To form a Parliamentary Group and be eligible for government subsidies to political parties of around $4 million, a party must have 5 MPs overall between the 2 Houses.  With this election the PLP will have 2 members in the Lower House and with 2 current members in the Upper house leaves it one short. 

But PLP leader Ozawa seems to have one last trick up his sleeve and may show that the political grand-master had another rabbit to pull out of his hat.  The trick is what is being called the Trojan Horse.  Right before the 2014 elections 2 PLP MPs left PLP to join DPJ with the support of Ozawa.  They are 鈴木克昌 (who has been close to Ozawa for years) and 小宮山泰子.  Both were elected on the DPJ ticket.  There is talk that one or even both will rejoin PLP to push it over the top to get to 5 seats.   It is totally possible Ozawa saw what could take place so he help arrange for these defections from PLP to DPJ to have them as cards to play later.

Also 3 former PLP members that has joined JIP over the last year or so were also elected on the JIP ticket.  They are 木内孝胤, 太田和美, and 牧義夫.  They another poll of possible defectors to PLP that Ozawa could pull off to get to 5 MPs.  We will see what comes of this trick. 

[jaichind]

Some final thoughts about this election.  For me the main takeaway is that despite Abe over-performing what I expected (even though he clearly unperformed what the news media polls had expected especially when it came to PR vote share as the media outlets where thinking that LDP would get up to 40% on the PR list and it ended up being 33%), Abe did not win this election and there is a good argument that it should count as a loss to some extent.

Abe for sure got what he wanted from a calender point of view.  He now can face the Sept 2015 LDP President race with the 2014 election win and with a solid argument that he led the LDP to 2 landslide victories in a row.  But in many ways this election means that 2015 will be difficult for Abe as he did not accomplish what he hoped for in this election.  The reason for this is the election results showed that while the LDP-KP gained over 7% on the  PR list, that mainly came as farming the YP vote.  The LDP-KP actually lost ground in the FPTP due to some DPJ JIP PLP SDP opposition consolidation.  The only reason the losses were not worse was because the incompleteness of said consolidation especially with respect to the YP vote as well as JCP over-performing.  Also KP gained ground within the alliance even as the PFG imploded.  Also the 2014 LDP-KP coalition is very much dependent on the YP vote.  What this means is that the 2014 LDP-KP coalition is now much broader than in 2012 and more vulnerable to policy contradictions.   Abe moving in a hawkish direction to capture the PFG vote will face resistance from the now more powerful KP.  Abe making a decision to delay economic reforms will mean that the YP vote that came over to LDP will defect to JIP.  But an Abe decision to move forward on economic reforms will face resistance from the LDP MPs from economic backward areas which also gained ground within LDP this election.   So in others words, policy choices that Abe will have to make will erode his 2014 coalition almost immediately.   

Also the 2014 elections showed that clearly Abe has lost ground since the 2013 elections.  LDP-KP lost over 2% of the PR vote relative to the 2013 upper house elections even as it gained 4%-5% from the YP 2013 vote.  This brings ups to another failure of Abe in this election.  He failed to finish off JIP.  I think deep down one goal of Abe was to finish off JIP this election so a economic libertarian, middle-of-the road dove but anti-LDP party does not emerge as a force post 2014.  Such a party would mean that if Abe dose not push forward with economic reforms those YP vote he just gained would defect to JIP.  What JIP has become is a larger version of YP but aligned with DPJ at a high level to opposed LDP-KP domination.  DPJ will now evolve into a labor union based center-left party that is mostly dovish while JIP will become an economic center-right party of economic reform and middle of the road on dove hawk issues.  This might be a better outcome than the 2003-2009 DPJ period where you have both types of political thinking within DPJ making it a difficult party to manage.   DPJ and JIP will still face issues of vote leakage when they from tactical alliances but now they are in a much better position to capture votes from LDP as LDP mistakes are made.

I think the bigwigs in the LDP knows this as well.  This why if the economy does not do well in 2015 and Abe makes tough choices which could mean defections from his 2014 coalition, the 2015 LDP Presidential election might not be a cakewalk after all.  In that sense Abe did not win the 2014 elections.

[EPG]

If Abe didn't win, nobody did, nor is it clear what winning would entail. He is in charge and nobody has a mandate to take over instead. DPJ certainly didn't win. They did a bit better than in 2012, but nowhere near a mandate to promote their own policies in government one day. Their apparent road to government is through JIP, but they are still closer to LDP in some senses.