Abstract
This chapter examines the electoral performance of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) in the 2017 general election. The JCP lost about 30% of proportional representation (PR) votes relative to the previous election, and the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) appears to be the main recipient of the voters who left the JCP. The JCP reduced its number of single-seat district (SSD) candidates in this election, but still ran candidates in 71% of SSDs. The presence or absence of a JCP candidate in SSDs, however, does not seem to have substantially influenced the overall results.
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Notes
- 1.
The PLP’s official name was “the People’s Life Party & Tarō Yamamoto and Friends” from December 2014. It changed its name to the Liberal Party in October 2016.
- 2.
The data on the SSD-tier results in 2017 used in this chapter were compiled by Yuki Yanai (Kochi University of Technology) from Asahi Shinbun’s website.
- 3.
Elections in Okinawa are fought in a unique context owing to the importance of the issues related to the US bases there. Opposition parties, including the JCP, have a history of successful cooperation in Okinawan elections. See Kagotani (2016).
- 4.
The party’s target PR vote share, which was determined in the January 2017 party congress, was 15%.
- 5.
In the seven elections conducted from 1996 to 2014, only three SSD candidates from the JCP were victorious (two in 1996 and one in 2014).
- 6.
A redistricting of SSDs was conducted between the 2014 and 2017 elections. As a result, 91 out of 289 SSDs have different boundaries, which makes it problematic to compare the electoral results between the two elections. Yet, except for the 21 SSDs in six prefectures where the number of districts within the prefecture was reduced, the change in the district boundaries was minimal. The analysis in this section excludes the 21 SSDs with significant changes but includes the rest of the 268 SSDs . The PR vote results aggregated based on SSDs were provided by Kuniaki Nemoto (Musashi University).
- 7.
The data on DID percentages were gathered by the author. Note that for a majority of the SSDs, population data from the 2010 census were used. The numbers were updated with the 2015 census results only for the SSDs that were redistricted before the 2017 election. The exact DID percentage was not obtainable for 29 SSDs and estimated numbers were used instead. Detailed information about this variable is available from the author upon request.
- 8.
A simple bivariate regression of the CDP’s PR votes and the DID% produces a significant and positive coefficient on the DID variable. A similar regression for Hope shows a significant and negative coefficient.
- 9.
SSDs in Osaka are excluded from the analysis because the electoral results show a very different pattern in Osaka, where the Ishin party is exceptionally strong. Ishin’s PR vote shares in Osaka’s SSDs are 27% on average while they are only 5% on average in the rest of the country. Outside of Osaka, the SSD where Ishin had the highest PR vote share was Hyogo 7th with 17%, but Ishin had at least 23% in all of Osaka’s SSDs.
- 10.
This analysis solely focuses on PR votes and does not consider the possible impacts from the SSD tier to the PR votes. It is possible that whether a party nominates an SSD candidate or not influences that party’s PR vote share. See Nemoto (this volume, p. 165).
- 11.
The 2009 HR election was a rare occasion where the JCP reduced its SSD candidates to about half of the total SSDs. It was not a result of coordination with other parties but the JCP’s unilateral action. See Maeda (2010) about that election and the JCP’s performance.
- 12.
About spoiler effects, see, for example, Besley and Coate (1997).
- 13.
Scheiner et al. (this volume, p. 29) also show a simulation using JCP votes in SSDs. My analysis is different from theirs in two ways. First, mine uses the 80% assumption, while they discuss a scenario where all JCP votes move to the main opposition candidates. Second, they show what happens if all opposition votes are concentrated into one candidate, but my focus is on what happens if JCP votes move to the leading opposition candidate; and there may be more opposition candidates.
- 14.
For the ten SSDs where there were no candidates other than those from the LDP and the JCP, it was impossible to add 80% of JCP votes to any candidate. The margins shown in the graph are thus the actual vote margins in the election.
- 15.
As for the eight Kōmeitō candidates who were elected in SSDs, none of them could have lost even if all JCP votes had moved to leading opposition candidates.
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Maeda, K. (2018). The JCP: A Perpetual Spoiler?. In: Pekkanen, R., Reed, S., Scheiner, E., Smith, D. (eds) Japan Decides 2017. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76475-7_6
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