Propagation: Seeds & scions (2)

2 ideas sprouting »

1. The wikipedia pages on the Japanese elections are well done, featuring maps, vote totals, and breaking the seat totals down by single member district and block seats.

   For the last election, I could tell that the LDP landslide was overstated, they didn’t get a majority of the votes and a number of Koizumi’s critics within the party survived as independents. The made big gains in the cities but saw erosion in their rural base. In this election, of course, their gains in the cities were wiped out and in fact they got hammered in the cities. A party can get a cheap boost in support by adopting policies that alienate their base, but eventually they pay for it.

   Likewise in this election, the Democrats got 42% of the popular vote, 6% more than last time, so again the single member district system is exaggerating their actual support. Almost 30% of the vote went to minor parties, with with New Komeito, the Social Democrats, and the Communists stagnating, this indicates that alot of the vote went to new minor parties. The Democrats seem to have had an electoral pact with two minor parties that helped them increase their seat total.

   With elections like this, one of the two major parties votes collapses but you rarely see their supporters simply voting for the other major party. They might stay home (as in the UK in 1997) or vote for third parties (as in Canada in 1993). In this election it looks like alot of LDP support bled off into fringe parties and independent candidates.

   One of the fringe parties has the only in Japan name of the “Happiness Realization Party”. It looks like the chief plank in their platform is to increase Japan’s population to 300 million. While the process of doing this may well increase happiness, I think there are alot of practical problems making Japan even more crowded. Japanese voters seem to have seen this and they didn’t win any seats.

   Seed planted by Ed — 31 August 2009 @ 15:43

2. Also, the blogger Charles Hugh Smith has an thoughtful analysis of what the likely policy consquences of the election will be:

   http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

   The Democrats seem determined to do things differently than the LDP. It will be interesting to see what happens.

   Seed planted by Ed — 31 August 2009 @ 16:02

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