Reading the Tokyo elections
What the capital's legislative elections reveal about the political moment
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Tokyoites voted on Sunday, 22 June for the metropolitan assembly, a vote that has been characterized as the preliminary battle of the upper house elections.
There is reason to question this characterization — there is, for example, no real analog to Governor Koike Yuriko and her Tokyoites First Party (TFP) in the national context — but the sheer scale of Tokyo makes it useful as a gauge of the mood of a particular slice of the electorate, since the metropolis's 11.5 million voters will elect six upper house members and be a big chunk of votes for PR candidates.
While still a local election with idiosyncratic local features, Tokyo’s scale notwithstanding, the Tokyo elections raise several questions about national politics ahead of the upper house elections next month.
The headline conclusion of the night was that it was a bad night for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and perhaps the ruling coalition as a whole. The party won only twenty-one seats in the 127-seat assembly, falling behind the TFP, which won 31 seats. The LDP lost twelve seats total. Kōmeitō also had a disappointing night, winning nineteen seats but failing to elect all of its candidates (twenty-two this year) for the first time since 1989.
And yet there may be silver linings for Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru and the national LDP. Most importantly, the populist moment — which arguably began with Ishimaru Shinji's second-place finish to Koike in last year's gubernatorial election — appears to be losing steam. Ishimaru's Path to Rebirth fielded forty-two candidates and elected none of them, appearing to leave Ishimaru speechless. Other parties that have used varieties of populist politics — the Democratic Party for the People (DPFP) and the right wing Sanseitō — fared better, with the DPFP electing nine of its eighteen candidates and Sanseitō electing three of four. But while Sanseitō's growing support bears watching, populists generally didn't make deep inroads with independents. In Mainichi's exit poll, for example, independents opted for the TFP (22%) followed by the LDP (10%).
For the LDP, it bears asking whether the Tokyo vote was the last gasp of the kickback scheme — since the Tokyo party has had its own version of the scandal — or whether it suggests that the LDP brand is still tainted by the scandal. Multiple exit polls showed that the LDP attracted the support of only 50% or so of LDP supporters, with many defecting to the TFP. That is not unlike last year's general election, when the LDP struggled to capture its own supporters, but that does not necessarily tell us whether the national LDP will have similar struggles next month, particularly since they will not have the TFP — with which the Tokyo LDP is effectively cooperating — as an alternative. Losing voters in Tokyo to the TFP seems like the least-bad outcome for the LDP, as opposed to losing voters to the CDP, DPFP, or one of the more populist alternatives.
Of course, there is bad news for the national LDP. In Yomiuri's exit poll, wages and cost-of-living increases were overwhelmingly cited as the main issue of the campaign, with 33% citing this issue followed by health and welfare issues in second with only 10% and demographics and politics and money tied for third with 9% each. To be sure, the Tokyo LDP's corruption was a factor — 40% told Yomiuri that it influenced their votes — but for a national issue to play so prevalent a role is not a positive sign for the LDP.
As Nikkei suggests, the lesson of the Tokyo election may be the ongoing diffusion of political power, i.e. the deepening of a "many weak" party system. The LDP's brand is tarnished; the CDP is treading water; Kōmeitō's machine is losing strength; the DPFP may struggle to make the leap to the next tier; Ishin no Kai's presence outside Kansai is stagnant; the JCP is declining; and the populist parties of right and left are limited in their reach and dependent on the vicissitudes of social media. In short, if the story of Japanese politics during the Heisei period was the concentration of power in fewer hands, the Reiwa period has thus far been characterized by a swing of the pendulum in favor of diffusion, fragmentation, and enervation.
Perhaps it is appropriate that the stakes in the upper house election next month are stability versus further fragmentation, whether the ruling coalition can preserve its majority in the upper house — a key tool for exercising control — or whether the system continues to fragment, since a ruling coalition defeat would mean not only true minority government but a likely LDP leadership change, messy negotiations among parties, and weaker national leadership. For the same reason, the upper house election could look different from the Tokyo elections because the national implications will be front and center, which could serve to bring LDP supporters back to the party and discourage disaffected independents from turning out against the government.1
Although the outcome of Tokyo’s elections — the de facto coalition of the TFP, LDP and Kōmeitō continuing to hold a majority even if the balance of power has shifted — points to continuing stability in Tokyo’s government too.