Wrapping up the election coverage for the time being, the Japan Times has a rundown of some interesting statistics of elected members of the Diet:

* 158 first time lawmakers were elected, including 143 from the DPJ (almost half of their total number).

* The average age of elected members is 52 years, with the DPJ averaging [...]

The Japanese Communist Party took 9 seats in Sunday’s election, with almost 5 million votes (7% of the total). Astonishing that they could be so successful in a developed and supposedly well educated country such as Japan. Ampontan has a great post describing the Communist Manifesto (and poking plenty of holes in it…):

Tags: [Communist Party, Election 2009, National Election]

Well, the election is over, and as shown in the post below, the results were a massive win to the opposition DPJ. Just how big that win was gives rise to the title of this post…

With the result of the election in no doubt minutes after the polls closed (actually they haven’t been in [...]

Alliances and parties
Local seats
+/-
Block seats
+/-
Block votes
 %
+/-
Total seats
+/-

  
Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) Minshutō – 民主党
221
+169
87
+26
29,784,743
42.4%
+11.4
308
+195

Social Democratic Party (SDP) Shamintō – 社民党
3
+2
4
-2
2,999,040
4.3%
-1.2
7
±0

People’s New Party (PNP) Kokuminshintō – 国民新党
3
+1
0
-2
1,218,020
1.7%
±0.0
3
-1

Anticipated DPJ-SDP-PNP Coalition
227
+172
91
+22
34,001,803
48.4%
+10.2
318
+194

  
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Jimintō – 自民党
64
-155
55
-22
18,782,218
26.7%
-11.5
119
-177

New Komeito Party (NKP) [...]

TV Asahi have called the election for DPJ – 315 seats to 106 according to exit polls…

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Heading in to the election tonight, here is a brief summary of the positions of the various parties in the lower house prior to the election:

House of Representatives:

LDP          296 seats

DPJ          113 seats

NKP          31 seats

JCP            9 seats

SDP            7 seats

PNP            4 seats

NPN            1 seat

NPD            1 seat

After the 2007 Upper House election, the DPJ hold 109 of the [...]

Today Japan go to the polls, and all expectations are that some time tonight we will see a new government elected. Could it be that Japan has finally developed a two-party system of government…?

I first came to Japan in 1992, and I was here for the short-lived attempt by Hosokawa to take over the government [...]