ABSTRACT
In 2009 Japanese voters handed a landslide election victory to opposition Democratic Party, reversing their 2005 judgment when they gave an equally dramatic landslide victory to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The Democrat’s share of the vote in 2009 increased 14.5 percent; the LDP’s dropped 9.4 percent. Not only was 2009 the LDP’s first loss in a House of Representatives election since the formation of the Party in 1955; it was also the most dramatic shift in voter preferences in Japan’s modern political history. Excluding elections with significant numbers of defections or a party merger, the most dramatic shift in LDP support, prior to 2009, was a 5.9 percent drop in 1967. The greatest shift in support for a major opposition party occurred in 1993 when support for the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) dropped 9 percent.
