Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe comfortably won re-election on Sunday, with his ruling coalition securing an unassailable majority in the lower house, media exit polls showed.
Private broadcaster TBS projected his Liberal Democratic Party would win 294 seats while its junior partner Komeito would get 34, for a combined 328 seats.
Abe’s ruling party appeared headed for a landslide victory in lower house elections, according to projections released soon after polls closed Sunday.
The projections, based on exit polls, showed the ruling Liberal Democratic Party easily retaining its majority in the 475-seat House of Representatives. Exit polls have been reliable predictors of the final results in past Japanese elections.
The Liberal Democrats, a conservative party that has been in power for most of the post-Second World War era, appeared to have fallen short of securing a two-thirds majority on their own, but may have done so together with their coalition partner, the Buddhist-backed Komei party.
The vote was seen as less of a verdict on Abe’s policies than an acquiescence to the ruling party’s growing power.
“I think Mr. Abe is the only choice we have considering from what I heard and saw in the reports,” retiree Hiroshi Yamada said as he came out of a downtown Tokyo polling station on Sunday.
He was echoing sentiments shared by many Japanese. Despite weakening popularity ratings, a recession and messy campaign finance scandals, the Liberal Democrats were virtually certain to triumph thanks to voter apathy and a weak opposition.
Tokyo’s municipal government said turnout in the city was lower than the last election two years ago, with 26 per cent of voters showing up as of mid-afternoon, compared with nearly 32 per cent as of that time in the previous lower house election in 2012. The final nationwide turnout in that election was a record-low 59.3 million people.
A landslide victory could improve Abe’s chances of pushing ahead with ambitious political and economic reforms, including revising Japan’s constitution.
Abe called Sunday’s snap election for the lower house, saying that he wanted a fresh mandate for his economic program and that he would step down if the Liberal Democrats lost their majority.
But weakness among opposition parties makes that unlikely. The popularity of the Democratic Party of Japan, which held power from 2009 to 2012, plunged after it failed to deliver on campaign pledges and struggled in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters.
Abe called the election two years early in a bid to strengthen his grip on power before tackling unpopular policies such as restarting nuclear reactors taken off-line after the 2011 Fukushima disaster and a security policy shift away from post-war pacifism.
Abe took office two years ago promising to revive a stagnant economy and restore Japan’s fading stature. Since then, share prices have risen and many companies have reported record profits. But the economic recovery has faltered in recent months, with the country returning to recession after a sales tax hike chilled demand among consumers and businesses.
Many voters were perplexed over the decision to call an election.
“I think two years (since Abe became prime minister) is too soon to decide whether his policy failed or not,” said Yoshiko Takahashi, a Tokyo businesswoman.