2019 Japan Unified Local Elections(April) and Upper House elections (July 21st)

[xelas81]

Another fringe right wing party that has ran in various Upper house district seats before but this time will also run on the PR slate is NHKから国民を守る党 or Party to protect people from the NHK.

The party which has been around since 2013 is founded and led by 立花 孝志 (Tachibana Takashi).  He seems to have worked for NHK for a long time but had a falling out and was fired from his job there.  The party's position is that the NHK is part of some World Government Globalist conspiracy and is focused on de-funding NHK.    This had some some successes in various local elections as a protest party but is unlikely to get anywhere close to even a reasonable chunk of votes to win any seats on the PR slate.

LOL
There is literal anime about a guy who thinks NHK is part of vast conspiracy out to get him.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Welcome_to_the_N.H.K.

[xelas81]

Asahi poll on Abe led Constitutional revision - For/Against 30/50

Abe might have to go gently on this issue although the For bloc is far more motivated and likely to turn out.

It seems to me that Abe personally wants the Constitutional revision but is unwilling to take the risk to actually to have the referendum. IMO regardless of the actual results the referendum could cause politcal realignment detrimental to LDP and Abe.

[xelas81]

CDP is complaining about a Abe dirty trick.  In various Abe's stump speeches he keeps on referring to CDP leader 枝野幸男(Edano Yukio), as  枝野幸男(Edano Yukio) of the 民主(Democratic Party).  The reason why this incorrect name is important is that when the Japanese voter votes, he/she writes the name of the candidate on the ballot for the district race and writes the name or party name on the PR section.  When they write the names, acceptable abbreviations are accepted.   For example LDP is called 自由民主党 but often called 自民党, 自民 or even 自.  So if a voter writes on the PR section "自由民主党" "自民党" "自民" or "自" they call gets counted toward LDP.  DPJ or 民主党 was the main opposition party for years until DPJ became DP in 2016.  民主 was always an acceptable name on the PR section for DPJ and for DP...

But 自民党 could also mean Liberal Party, name used by Ichirō Ozawa lead party (twice).
Since Liberal party merged to DPP, it doesn't matter for this election but when it existed 自民党 could mean both LP and LDP.

[xelas81]

Post election Kyodo poll

Abe Cabinet approve/disapprove 48.6/38.2
Abe getting 4 term as LDP president approve/disapprove  40.6/52.6
Plan to increase consumption tax approve/disapprove 39.8/55.9
Constitutional Revision approve/disapprove  32.2/56.0
Pro-Constitutional Revision forces failure to win 2/3 majority approve/disapprove 29.8/12.2

Would delaying the consumption tax increase would lead into more deficit or budget cuts?

[xelas81]

To get a sense of the relative strength and reliance on the personal vote I broke out the PR vote for each party into votes for a candidate and votes for the party itself.

        PR Vote        Personal Vote        Party Vote
LDP   35.37%              9.98%             25.39%
KP     13.05%              4.50%              8.56% 
JRP     9.80%               1.38%              8.42%
PNHK  1.97%               0.29%              1.68%
HRP    0.40%               0.09%              0.32%
DPP    6.95%               2.61%              4.34%
CDP  15.81%               2.44%            13.38%
Olive   0.34%               0.06%              0.27% 
RS      4.55%               2.11%              2.45%
SDP    2.09%               0.57%              1.52%
LAB    0.16%                0.04%             0.12%       
JCP     8.95%               0.86%              8.09%
EP      0.54%               0.07%              0.54%   

First, the KP personal vote is bogus. All of them were voted for by instruction from KP High command.  For KP you can pretty much assume that there is NO personal vote and all the vote are for KP the party.  Beyond that the size of the LDP personal vote is large.  Many represent key interest groups/constituencies or are regional kingpins.   The DPP PR vote is also fairly dependent on the personal vote most of which are Rengo labor union vote.

Examples of powerful LDP key interest groups/constituencies PR candidates are the top two finishers on the LDP list  柘植芳文(Tsuge Yoshifumi) who used to be the head of the powerful National Post Office and as mentioned before 山田太郎 (Tarō Yamada) who now controls the "geek vote."

I looked around and constructed a list of local kingpins and tried to compute their impact on the PR vote of their party in said prefecture

Name                   Party     National PR    Prefecture    Prefecture      Prefecture     Prefecture 
                                           vote                           personal vote      Party PR    Party PR 2017
和田政宗                               228K             宮城            35K
(Masamune Wada)   LDP       0.58%        (Miyagi)         3.67%            39.61%         34.78%

佐藤信秋                               233K             新潟             29K
(Satō Nobuaki)        LDP       0.46%        (Niigata)        2.91%           43.73%          38.24%
 
宮本周司                               202K             石川             63K
(Miyamoto Shūji)     LDP       0.40%       (Ishikawa)     14.52%           51.47%          43.32%

北村経夫                               178K            山口              35K
(Kitamura Tsuneo)   LDP       0.36%      (Yamaguchi)     9.89%           50.24%          48.12%

衛藤晟一                               155K            大分              38K
(Etō Seiichi)            LDP       0.31%         (Ōita)            8.05%          37.45%          32.48%

木村義雄                                 92K            香川             21K
(Kimura Yoshio)       LDP       0.18%      (Kagawa)         5.80%           43.28%          39.64%

吉田忠智                               149K           大分              48K
(Yoshida Tadatomo) SDP      0.30%         (Ōita)          10.06%           15.51%          11.85%

鈴木宗男                              221K           北海道            94K
(Suzuki Muneo)       JRP      0.44%       (Hokkaido)       3.96%             7.78%           2.76%

柴田巧                                  54K             富山              33K
(Shibata Takumi)     JRP      0.11%       (Toyama)        8.26%            14.54%           7.04%

和田政宗((Masamune Wada) of 宮城(Miyagi) was from a YP background and found himself as the had of the rump PJK which he merged into LDP earlier in 2019.

北村経夫((Kitamura Tsuneo) of 山口(Yamaguchi) had a bigger impact than these numbers suggest since this is Abe's home prefecture and Abe running here clearly pushed up LDP PR vote here in 2017.

吉田忠智(Yoshida Tadatomo) of 大分(Ōita) is the former head of SDP.

鈴木宗男(Suzuki Muneo) of 北海道(Hokkaido) is the head of LDP splinter NPD which used to be allied with DPJ but these days are aligned with LDP.

The candidates with most personal votes but did not win are DPP's 石上俊雄 and 田中久弥 with 192k and 143k and LDP's 比嘉奈津美 with 114k votes.
The candidate with least personal votes but still was elected is the 7th KP PR winner 塩田博昭
 with just 15k votes.