Turnout was just 56%, essentially unchanged from 54% in the last lower-house election in 2017
OBARA HIROYUKI, a 33-year-old office worker in Tokyo, considered voting for the first time this year. But he overslept on October 31st—election day—and had other plans in the afternoon. When it comes to politics, “nothing grabs my attention,” he says. “Nobody around me votes—at work, there's a sense that you shouldn't talk about politics.”
Nonetheless, the result is no stinging rebuke: it still won more than twice as many seats as the main opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party , and held on to enough seats to maintain a single-handed simple majority in the chamber. Yet the news was even worse for Japan's embattled opposition, which failed to make use of the political tailwinds. It could not motivate independent voters. And memories of its messy rule from 2009 to 2012 remain potent. Aizawa Yuki, a 31-year-old man who voted for the first time on Sunday in Tokyo's Kichijoji district, reluctantly cast a ballot for the LDP.
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