General elections were held in Japan on 27 October 2024 due to the early dissolution of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the National Diet, by Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Voting took place in all constituencies, including proportional blocks, to elect all 465 members of the House of Representatives.
The election was held one month after Ishiba took office as prime minister, after winning a heated contest in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presidential election on 27 September, following the resignation of Fumio Kishida as party leader due to his low approval rating amid the party-wide slush fund corruption scandal. The dissolution of the Diet was held eight days after the prime minister's investiture and 26 days before the voting day, both the shortest since the end of World War II.
Amid continued public discontent with the slush fund scandal, the governing LDP and its coalition partner Komeito lost their parliamentary majority in the lower house for the first time since 2009, with the LDP suffering its second-worst result in its history, securing only 191 seats. The Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), the main opposition party led by former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, achieved its best result in its history, increasing its seat count from 96 to 148. This was the first general election in Japan since 1955 wherein no party secured at least 200 seats.
The Democratic Party for the People (DPP) won 28 seats, surpassing Komeito to become the fourth-largest party in the chamber. The DPP emerged as a key player in the aftermath of the election as the LDP sought to negotiate their cooperation on a policy-by-policy basis in the next Diet session given the LDP's lack of a majority. Komeito suffered further losses including losing all of its seats in Osaka at the expense of the Osaka-based Ishin no Kai as well as the party's newly elected leader Keiichi Ishii losing his seat. Smaller opposition parties also gained seats, including left-wing populist party Reiwa Shinsengumi, right-wing populist party Sanseitō and the newly-formed far-right Conservative Party.
Ishiba was re-elected Prime Minister in the Diet on 11 November as head of an LDP-Komeito minority government.
Background Kishida's resignation Since the last general election in 2021, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was caught in a series of political crises, firstly the assassination of Shinzo Abe in 2022, which led to the heightened scrutiny against the allegations surrounding the Unification Church and its link to his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The close relationship between the party and the church caused a drop in approval rating of the Kishida cabinet, and anti-government protests and riots, leading to the first reshuffle of his cabinet on 10 August 2022 and second reshuffle in September 2023 to remove cabinet members affiliated with the church.
The Kishida government was further damaged by the party-wide slush fund corruption scandal in late 2023, which saw his approval rate drop to 23% as of 13 December 2023, the lowest such rating any prime minister had had since the LDP returned to power in 2012. By 22 December, Kishida's approval rate had further declined to 17%. On 18 January 2024, Kishida announced his intention to dissolve his Kōchikai faction as a result of the scandal. The following day on 19 January, the Shisuikai (Nikai faction) and Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyūkai (Abe faction) announced their dissolutions.
Kishida never recovered from the record-low approval ratings amid fallout from the scandal. His party lost all three seats up for election in the April 2024 by-elections, which were previously held by LDP or LDP-affiliated independents. On 14 August 2024, Kishida announced that he would step down as party president, thereby not seeking re-election in September.
Ishiba's call for early election
On 30 September 2024, former Minister of Defense Shigeru Ishiba, who won the heated nine-way contest in the party presidential election on 27 September, officially announced that he would call an early election to be held on 27 October, a year ahead of the expiration of the current term, to seek confidence from the people. After his inauguration as the prime minister on 1 October, the House of Representatives was dissolved on 9 October, with the election being announced on the 15th, and voting to take place on the 27th.
The election is held after the replacement of major party leaders. The LDP elected Ishiba as new leader on 27 September, the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) elected former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on 23 September, Nobuyuki Baba took leadership of Japan Innovation Party on 30 November 2021, Keiichi Ishii was elected leader of Komeito on 28 September, and Tomoko Tamura became leader of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) on 18 January 2024. It is the first time since 2012 where all three of the leading parties in the Diet have had new leadership entering the next election.
The regular election to the House of Councillors, the other house of the national legislature which cannot be dissolved and is thus on fixed terms, will take place in 2025; but, also on 27 October, a by-election to the House of Councillors will be held in Iwate. On the prefectural level, the gubernatorial elections in Toyama and Okayama had already been set for 27 October. This was the first dissolution of the Diet since 14 October 2021. The dissolution was eight days after the prime minister's inauguration and the voting and counting 26 days later that, both the shortest since the end of World War II.
Electoral system The 465 seats of the House of Representatives are contested via parallel voting. Of these, 289 members are elected in single-member constituencies using first-past-the-post voting, while 176 members are elected in 11 multi-member constituencies via party list proportional representation. Candidates from parties with legal political party-list, which requires either ≥5 Diet members or ≥1 Diet member and ≥2% of the nationwide vote in one tier of a recent national election, are allowed to stand in a constituency and be present on the party list. If they lose their constituency vote, they may still be elected in the proportionally allocated seats. However, if such a dual candidate wins less than 10% of the vote in their majoritarian constituency, they are also disqualified as a proportional candidate.
Reapportionment The electoral districts will be readjusted according to the results of the 2020 Japan census. Originally, it was intended to be readjusted for the last election, but it was held in the existing constituencies not long after the census results came out.
Newly created seats Ten new districts and three new block seats will be created.
Tokyo-26th Tokyo-27th Tokyo-28th Tokyo-29th Tokyo-30th Kanagawa-19th Kanagawa-20th Saitama-16th Aichi-16th Chiba-14th 18th Tokyo block seat 19th Tokyo block seat 23rd Minami-Kanto block seat
Seats eliminated Ten districts and three block seats will be eliminated.
Hiroshima-7th Miyagi-6th Niigata-6th Fukushima-5th Okayama-5th Shiga-4th Yamaguchi-4th Ehime-4th Nagasaki-4th Wakayama-3rd 13th Tohoku block seat 11th Hokuriku-Shin'etsu block seat 11th Chugoku block seat
Political parties and candidates
Parties Leader Ideology Seats Status Last election At dissolution Liberal Democratic Party Shigeru Ishiba Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan Yoshihiko Noda Liberalism rowspan="2" Japan Innovation Party Nobuyuki Baba Right-wing populismEconomic liberalism Komeito Keiichi Ishii Buddhist democracy Japanese Communist Party Tomoko Tamura Communism rowspan="6" Democratic Party For the People Yuichiro Tamaki Conservatism Reiwa Shinsengumi Tarō Yamamoto ProgressivismLeft-wing populism Social Democratic Party Mizuho Fukushima Social democracy Sanseitō Sohei Kamiya Right-wing populism Ultraconservatism Nonpartisan and others
As of 15 October, there were 314 women competing in the election, which exceeded the number recorded in the 2009 election. The proportion of women in the electoral race also increased from 5.7% in 2021 to 23.4%. There were also 136 candidates who were related to previous officeholders, making up 10% of all candidates. The LDP accounted for 97 of them, equivalent to 28.4% of all its candidates, while the CDP had 27 candidates, equivalent to 11.4% of its list.
Governing coalition Single-member districts candidates Reference On 6 October, Shigeru Ishiba indicated that he would not endorse any lawmakers who have been suspended from party membership over the LDP slush fund scandal. Ishiba also indicated that those who had involved scandal, whether they had been sanctioned or not, would be banned from running double candidacy in single-seat districts and proportional representation blocs, which was expected to affect at least 30 such candidates. He explained that it was a response to the "criticism and anger" of the public which were stronger than they expected.
On 9 October, the LDP officially pulled its endorsement of the following 12 members:
Party membership suspended: Hakubun Shimomura (Tokyo 11th district), former Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Yasutoshi Nishimura (Hyogo 9th district), former Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Tsuyoshi Takagi (Fukui 2nd district), former Chairman of the LDP Diet Affairs Committee Suspended from party positions for one year which still in effect: Kōichi Hagiuda (Tokyo 24th district), former Chairman of the LDP Policy Research Council Katsuei Hirasawa (Tokyo 17th district), former Minister of Reconstruction Hiromi Mitsubayashi (Saitama 14th district), former Vice Minister of the Cabinet Office Suspended from party positions for six months which now expired: Ichiro Kanke (Tohoku PR block), former Deputy Minister of Reconstruction (withdrew his candidacy on 12 October) Kazuyuki Nakane (Northern Kanto PR block), former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Kiyoshi Odawara (Tokyo 21st district), former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Received disciplinary reprimand: Kenichi Hosoda (Niigata 2nd district), former Deputy Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry No punishment received: Takao Ochi (Tokyo PR block), former Deputy Minister of Cabinet Office Hirofumi Imamura (Tokyo PR block), former member of the House of Representatives
On 11 October, three members who were involved in the scandal, all from the former Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyūkai faction, including former Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Mio Sugita, who was suspended from party positions for six months, former Vice-Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Asako Omi, who was given a reprimand, and former Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs Kentaro Uesugi, who did not receive any disciplinary action, would withdraw their candidacies in the election.
Keiichi Ishii, leader of the Komeito which was LDP's junior coalition partner, said on 8 October that the party would not recommend LDP lawmakers who were not officially endorsed in the election, but decided to recommend Nishimura and Mitsubayashi on 9 October despite LDP decision based on the wishes of the party's local organizations.
Opposition parties + Number of registered candidates by party Party Before election Const. PR Running in both Total LDP 247 266 76 209 342 CDP 98 207 30 204 237 Ishin 44 163 1 145 164 Komei 32 11 39 0 50 JCP 10 213 23 12 236 DPP 7 41 1 41 42 Reiwa 3 19 16 16 35 SDP 1 10 7 10 17 Sansei 1 85 10 12 95 Mintsuku 0 6 0 1 6 Hoshu 0 4 26 0 30 CES 0 0 2 0 2 / 22 88 – – 88 Total 465 1,113 231 650 1,344