In the House of Representatives (lower house) general election in Japan, the Centrist Reform Alliance, the largest opposition party created by the Constitutional Democratic Party and Komeito, saw its seats shrink to less than one-third of the previous total, suffering a ‘defeat of historic proportions’. The new party was hastily put together to counter Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her surprise move to dissolve the chamber, but assessments say it failed to produce synergy and its survival has been thrown into doubt.

According to the Asahi Shimbun on the 9th, the Centrist Reform Alliance won only 49 of the 465 seats in the lower house in the general election held the previous day. This was down 118 from the combined 167 seats held by the Constitutional Democratic Party and Komeito before the campaign was officially announced. Of the 289 single-member districts nationwide, the Alliance won in only seven.

The Constitutional Democratic Party was hit particularly hard. Ahead of the vote, 144 of its 148 lower house members joined the Centrist Reform Alliance, yet only 21 survived. Ichiro Ozawa, who had held his seat since first being elected in 1969 and had long been dubbed a ‘master of elections’, also lost his seat.

By contrast, all 28 candidates on the Komeito proportional representation list were elected, raising its seats from 21. This was the result of an agreement between the two parties: Komeito would not field single-member district candidates and would support Constitutional Democratic candidates, in return for higher rankings on the proportional list.

The Constitutional Democratic Party and Komeito launched the new party just before the lower house was dissolved last month, vowing to counter the Takaichi cabinet, whose conservative colors are pronounced on issues such as foreign and security policy, by drawing in centrist as well as moderate conservative and progressive voters. Komeito, which has roots in the religious organization Soka Gakkai, can deliver 10,000 to 20,000 votes per district, and the Constitutional Democratic Party had secured backing from the largest labor federation, the ‘Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo)’, raising expectations for victories in tight races.

However, after a defeat on a scale rarely seen, voices inside the party have been saying there was not enough time to persuade voters of the new party name and policy orientation. There was also a diagnosis that the two sides failed to achieve a true fusion: the Constitutional Democratic Party, which had advocated ‘zero nuclear power’ and opposed recognizing the right of collective self-defense, and Komeito, which had been in coalition with the Liberal Democratic Party for 26 years until it left the government last year. Although the Constitutional Democratic Party shifted its stance in the merger process, including allowing conditional restarts of nuclear plants, this is analyzed to have instead provoked a backlash among its traditional base.

Support among younger voters was especially low. The Asahi Shimbun, analyzing exit poll results from the previous day, pointed out that while support for the Centrist Reform Alliance was in the mid-20% range among those in their 70s and older, it stayed at 5~8% among those under 40. According to the Tokyo Shimbun, online criticism compared the absence of any youth or women among the five Alliance executives who appeared at events such as the party-name announcement to the mobile network ‘5G’, dubbing them ‘5-jii’ (a Japanese term meaning grandfathers).

As the opposition loses a focal point, concerns are emerging that it will be difficult for the time being to rein in a ‘LDP one-party dominance’. The Asahi predicted, “Voices are beginning to treat the continued existence of the party as precarious, and party management will become more difficult.” It was also reported that, as Komeito's share within the new party increases, dissatisfaction is surfacing on the Constitutional Democratic side that it conceded too much.

Yoshihiko Noda of the Constitutional Democratic Party and Tetsuo Saito of Komeito, who had served as co-leaders of the Centrist Reform Alliance, tendered their resignations. The Asahi reported that the Centrist Reform Alliance intends to build a new leadership structure by the time the special Diet session, scheduled for the 18th, is convened.