Ruling camp seen winning “absolute majority” in Lower House

October 22, 2017

Tokyo- Japan's ruling camp looks certain to have won a so-called "absolute stable majority" of 261 or more seats in Sunday's crucial election for the House of Representatives, the all-important lower chamber of parliament, according to Jiji Press exit polls.

The Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, Komeito, are thus believed to have cleared a simple majority of 233 seats in the 465-seat Lower House, the victory bar set by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is also president of the LDP.

An absolute stable majority of 261 seats allows the ruling bloc to dominate the posts of chairs of all 17 Lower House standing committees and take a majority of seats in each of the committees.

Meanwhile, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike's Party of Hope, created soon before the election, may not be able to maintain its pre-election strength of 57 seats, according to the exit polls.

The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which was recently launched by former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano and other former liberal members of the Democratic Party, is expected to emerge as the largest opposition force in the Lower House, with more than 50 seats.

It was the first Lower House election since December 2014.

Beginning with the latest election, the number of Lower House seats has been cut by 10 to 465, the smallest in the post-World War II period, to narrow the disparities in the weight of votes. Jiji Press