Exit polls show Abe increasing support
Print Edition
JAPAN’S ruling coalition was a clear winner in yesterday’s parliamentary election, exit polls indicated, paving the way for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to push ahead with his economic revival policies, but also possibly changing the nation’s postwar pacifist constitution.
Several major TV news shows and the Kyodo News agency reported almost as soon as voting ended that the ruling coalition, headed by Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, had kept its majority and increased its number of seats. The opposition lost many of its seats, they said.
Half of the seats of parliament’s less powerful upper house were up for grabs. There had been no possibility of a change of power because the ruling coalition already controls the more powerful lower house, but the balloting was a key gauge for how much support Abe’s coalition has among the public. The opposition had called on voters to show their rejection of a more assertive military role for Japan.
Some analysts see 78 as a magic number — the number of seats that would give the ruling coalition a two-thirds majority in the upper house. That kind of support could be enough for Abe to push forward with rewriting Japan’s postwar pacifist constitution.
But a referendum would still be needed, and public support for pacifism remains high.
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