Monday, July 15, 2013














- the absence of real policy choice in between the parties.





Now, how will these votes be divided up?


The voting numbers I get, in aggregate, are:

LDP 20,000,000
New Komeito 7,000,000
DPJ 5,000,000
Your Party 5,000,000
JRP 4,500,000
JCP 3,500,000
SDP 1,800,000
Other parties 1,200,000


LDP 22
New Komeito 7
Your Party 5
Other parties 0






TheStrawMan said...

Regarding New Komeito voters being told to stay home, or vote for a different party. Is that not within the realm of possibility? The New Komeito has always done as it is told by the LDP, and has always acted with the LDP's best interests at heart.

Philippe said...

Your number-crunching confirms my hunch as to why we’ve seen (heard?) much less noise around the revision of the constitution since spring: the pro-revisionists (and in particular the Abe mafia) don’t have the numbers and they know it – your numbers here and their internal polls since april/may all point in that direction.

In a way it is kinda sad and we’re worst off now. The Abe government will use its comfortable majority to push all kind of crap through (the mil. contractors will be happy, the centralist forces & bureaucracy will be strengthened), carefully balanced to keep the various LDP factions quiet while keeping the appearance that the economy is doing fine. A push for a revision of the constitution on the other hand would have set off much more polarising discussions. And eventually the undoing of the Abe government. Am I alone in thinking that a reasonably significant faction inside the LDP is less than enthusiast about the proposals on the table? In a snarky way, I would love to see Abe losing a chunk of his party in the same way Noda-san got rid of half of his party…

PS - Where are the sound trucks? Only one noise machine has ventured in the neighbourhood, and not even really close.

Anonymous said...

Jill says:
Just hear Ellis Krauss claim the opposite (and brush off my disagreement in the Q&A)

MTC said...

TheStrawMan -

The LDP and the New Komeito were cold enemies until 1998, when the LDP, in its hour of need, suddenly found that its longtime relationships with the Lotus Sect and the New Religions had lost all their spark.

MTC said...

Philippe -

I am agnostic on the possibility of there being a fit alternative to the current government -- a position I will have to explain, I know.

As for the lack of sound trucks, remember that a) these the district elections are prefectural, meaning that each campaign has a hell of a lot of territory to cover, and b) the LDP is so far ahead in most districts that resources are probably concentrated on a very few competitive races, like the third seat in Chiba and the second seats in Miyagi and Shizuoka.

MTC said...

Jill -

Dr. Krauss may need to listen to more early REM:

Then again we all do.

Anonymous said...

It is also worth mentioning that Your Party has said that constitutional revision need not be rushed or prioritised over other policies...meaning they would likely want to extract administrative reform promises from the LDP in return for support on progressing constitutional revision, or discussion about it.