Earlier this month, previewing the year’s elections I mentioned that only three G20 countries were scheduled to go to the polls. Now already we have a fourth: Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, announced this week that her country will go to the polls on 8 February (the same day as Thailand).
Takaichi took office last October after her predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba, resigned following his party’s poor performance in upper house elections. Ishiba, considered as more of a centrist within the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), had defeated her in the previous leadership election, in 2024, but voters at large failed to warm to him. Takaichi is more conservative but also has a degree of progressive cachet due to being Japan’s first female leader; comparisons with Margaret Thatcher have been common.
Like Ishiba, she has had to navigate a parliament in which the LDP lacks a majority. Its long-time junior partner, Komeito, walked out of the coalition after her election but before she had taken office. In its place, she negotiated an agreement with the right-wing Japan Innovation Party (Ishin), which provides support on matters of confidence without actually joining the government. Now she hopes to win a majority in her own right.
This will be the ninth lower house election in Japan this century, with all but two of them (in 2009 and 2021) being held early. But more often than not the destabilising factor has been the internal situation in the LDP rather than the numbers in parliament. Only Shinzo Abe, also from the party’s right, was able to exert full control as prime minister from 2012 to 2020.
Takaichi certainly seems to be enjoying a honeymoon period; polls show the LDP with more than double the support of the main opposition force, a new alliance between the Constitutional Democratic Party and Komeito. Also in the mix but well back will be Ishin, the centrist Democratic Party for the People and the far-right Sanseito. And as usual the LDP will be helped by the electoral system, which gives disproportionate weight to its rural support base.
Voters in Japan are no more keen on early elections than they are anywhere else, as Ishiba discovered, so Takaichi’s move is not without risk. But in an increasingly unstable world they will probably decide that this is not the time to be experimenting.
The World is Not Enough 