Commentary | Peter Chai and Charles Crabtree, Why did the Japanese public appear to vote against their own concerns?
In February’s lower house election, voters in Japan delivered the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) the most decisive single-party victory of the postwar era. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi now commands a two-thirds supermajority in the lower house. Yet the scale of that victory contrasts sharply with the public mood. Opinion polls consistently show voters anxious about the economy, especially inflation, as well as political funding and religious ties. Why, then, did broad anxiety with the status quo fail to translate into an electoral backlash, and what does that paradox reveal about how politics now operates?
Surprising results
On February 8, Japan's 51st House of Representatives election concluded with the LDP winning 316 seats, exceeding the Democratic Party of Japan's 308 seats in 2009 and the LDP's own previous record of 304 seats under Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1986. This unprecedented result gave a single party more than two-thirds of the lower house seats for the first time in postwar Japan.
The results broadly aligned with pre-election polls. The Centrist Reform Alliance (CRA)—formed by the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Komeito—collapsed from 167 seats to just 49. Nippon Ishin no Kai, the LDP's coalition partner, captured 36 seats. Among smaller parties, Sanseito won 15 seats, and Team Mirai, which founded just one year ago, entered the Diet for the first time, securing 11 seats.
A compressed campaign
The election timeline drew considerable scrutiny from elites in and outside the LDP. The lower house was dissolved on January 23, leaving only 16 days until voting, which is the shortest interval since World War II.
This compressed schedule could have mattered. Research published in 2017 using data from Japanese elections between 1955 and 2017 found that snap elections consistently disadvantage opposition parties. Beyond the conventional wisdom that ruling parties time elections to favorable economic conditions, there's another mechanism: the "surprise effect." Opposition parties struggle to mobilize resources, field quality candidates, and coordinate effectively when caught off guard.
This pattern might help explain why the CRA failed to present itself as a credible alternative government. The alliance performed poorly among non-affiliated voters, and the proportional vote share dropped from roughly 30% combined in 2024 to about 15% in this election.
Some electoral paradoxes
While the LDP triumphed, problems remain for the party, particularly when it comes to the economy. A Bloomberg analysis shows that since 2020, prices for 393 items have risen more than 10%, with sharp increases in staples like coffee and rice. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered energy price spikes in 2022, Japan's consumer price index has hovered around 3%, the highest inflation seen since the bubble economy collapsed.
The household squeeze is real and, one might have expected based on the large political science literature on retrospective voting, potentially consequential for the election. Food spending as a share of household budgets reached a 44-year high in 2025. Average monthly spending among households with two or more members hit 314,000 yen, up 4.6% year-on-year, with food expenditures rising 5.5%. Tokyo condominium prices also climbed 17.4%. Multiple opinion polls showed inflation as voters' top concern. Yet rising costs and sluggish real wage growth failed to translate into an electoral penalty.
Takaichi's policy agenda, which advocates a weaker yen and expanded government spending, raises questions about the future of inflation and government deficits. Her position on the consumption tax on food items remains ambiguous. She initially supported temporarily suspending the consumption tax, dropped the idea after becoming prime minister due to practical concerns, and then revived it during the election campaign.
In some ways, policy in Okinawa presents a similar paradox. Although local residents have expressed concerns over the construction of the Henoko U.S. military base, amid repeated scandals involving sexual crimes committed by U.S. military personnel as well as longstanding environmental issues such as water contamination, anti-base candidates suffered historic losses to the LDP in the single-member districts in this election. As does Takaichi’s hardline stance on immigration, which clashes with Japan's demographic realities of a shrinking population and chronic labor shortages.
On political funding, a Kyodo News poll found that 60.2% of respondents disapproved of the LDP's decision to endorse candidates linked to faction slush-fund scandals. Media reports last November revealed Takaichi's political organization had accepted corporate donations exceeding legal limits. She publicly endorsed LDP lawmakers involved in slush fund scandals and showed little interest in addressing the Unification Church ties highlighted in the trial of Yamagami Tetsuya, who assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and was sentenced to life in prison.
The "idol effect"
Despite all these ways in which Takaichi’s policies appear to run against median-voter preferences, her approval ratings remained resilient.
Some analysts attribute this disconnect to an "idol effect” or “Sana-mania” surrounding Takaichi, especially strong among younger supporters whose support has sometimes been dubbed “Sana-katsu.” In a December 2025 poll conducted by Sankei News and Fuji News Network, her support rate among those aged 18-29 was 92.4% compared to the overall 75.9%.
Rather than engaging with her economic policies' likely consequences, they appear drawn to her image of change, her symbolic appeal as Japan's first female prime minister, her nationalist messaging, and her active social media presence. Such as might be expected for a generation raised on social media, influencers, and the idea that personality sometimes matters more than substance.
The numbers support this interpretation. An LDP YouTube video featuring Takaichi surpassed 100 million views, far exceeding other parties. Only Sanseito and the Japan Conservative Party had videos topping 10 million views, a gap that also raises questions about the LDP’s large social media promotion spending.
Takaichi's popularity with younger voters also defied traditional liberal-conservative ideological divides. A survey by the Asahi Shimbun and University of Osaka found that among respondents aged 18-39 who self-identified as liberal, 34% planned to vote for the LDP, making it the most popular choice among this cohort — a significant result given Takaichi's conservative position.
Voter turnout
Some additional signs of the ‘idol effect’ might be found in voter enthusiasm. Voter turnout stood at 56.26%, up from 53.85% in 2024 but still the fifth-lowest in postwar history. Snowfall on election day, including Tokyo's first snow of the year, initially raised concerns, but early voting hit a record 27 million ballots. In particular, turnout among 18- to 19-year-olds reached 43.1%, up from 39.4% in 2024 and a historic high, suggesting more active youth participation.
By region, turnout peaked at 62.2% in Nara, the home prefecture of Takaichi, and bottomed out at 47.7% in Tottori, the hometown of former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who has publicly criticized Takaichi’s push for constitutional revision, her Diet remarks on Taiwan, and economic measures such as the rice voucher and the proposed consumption tax suspension.
On the LDP’s historic landslide, he commented, “It may be because Takaichi’s popularity is clear-cut. It’s a case of ‘leave it to me.’” At the same time, he expressed that “there were no clearly defined policy issues in the campaign.”
Also, Tottori recorded the LDP's lowest proportional vote share at 39.6%, compared with the nationwide high of 43.6% in Nara. The contrast highlights the geographic differences behind the LDP’s landslide, the potential role of personal influence, and differences in policy views among party members.
What comes next?
Although the LDP lacks a majority in the House of Councillors, Japan's Constitution grants the lower house primacy in ordinary legislation. Under Article 59, even if the upper house rejects a bill or leaves it unaddressed for 60 days, the lower house can enact it with a two-thirds vote.
Constitutional revision is another matter on the agenda. The UTokyo-Asahi Surveys showed that 93% of successful candidates in this election support revising the Constitution, a sharp increase from the 67% in the 2024 lower house election.
However, amending Article 9, the pacifist clause, would require two-thirds approval in both chambers plus a national referendum. With the next upper house election not until 2028 and only half of the members will be elected, this remains institutionally difficult.
Some express cautious optimism. With a clear majority, the LDP may no longer need to be preoccupied with approval ratings and social media promotion, and could focus on economic and other challenges. There's hope the party might reconsider its conservative positions on gender equality and immigration.
But the central puzzle remains: Japanese voters expressed deep concern about inflation and some of the LDP’s well-known policies, then handed an overwhelming mandate to a prime minister whose policies may make their concerns worse. The "idol effect" suggests that in an age of social media politics, symbolic appeal can outweigh substantive policy at least until the actuarial and metaphorical bills come due.
Peter Chai is Research Associate at the Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University. His research areas are political sociology, comparative politics, and public opinion. His research method is survey analysis, and his regional focus is East Asia.
Charles Crabtree is Senior Lecturer at Monash University. His research interests include intergroup relations and conflict with regional focuses on the Asia Pacific and the Former Soviet Union. He has published numerous articles at top journals in political science and other fields.
To cite this essay, please use the bibliographic entry suggested below:
Peter Chai and Charles Crabtree, “Why did the Japanese public appear to vote against their own concerns?,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, March 6, 2026; https://doi.org/10.52698/UUEQ8203.