Photo/Illutration Yumi Hayashi, center, celebrates her election victory with her supporters in Wakayama on April 23. (Toshiyuki Hayashi)

Rising opposition party Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party) snagged more than a fifth of ruling party supporters’ votes to secure a narrow victory in the Lower House by-election in Wakayama, according to exit polls by The Asahi Shimbun.

Yumi Hayashi, an Ishin newcomer, defeated Hirofumi Kado, a former lawmaker backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, by less than 5 percentage points on April 23.

While 77 percent of LDP supporters voted for Kado, 22 percent supported his opponent, Hayashi.

Fully 92 percent of Ishin supporters and 57 percent of independent voters cast their ballots for Hayashi.

Thirty-three percent of the respondents supported the LDP, while 27 percent were Ishin supporters. Independent voters made up 20 percent.

Asked about Ishin’s overall performance as a party, 18 percent said they approved of it very much and 63 percent said they did to some extent.

On the contrary, only 5 percent said they did not approve of Ishin at all and 11 percent said they didn’t very much.

Of the voters who said they approved of Ishin’s performance, 56 percent voted for Hayashi.

Although more than half of the voters disapproved of politicians’ children running for public office by taking over their parents’ constituency, the LDP’s Nobuchiyo Kishi won the by-election in the Yamaguchi No. 2 district, which had been held by his father, Nobuo, the former defense minister.

While 51 percent in the district opposed “hereditary politics,” 43 percent said they approved of it.

Kishi received support from 78 percent of the voters who approved of such a tradition, while 70 percent of the people who disapproved of it voted for Hideo Hiraoka, who was narrowly defeated.

In the Lower House by-election in Chiba No. 5 district, LDP newcomer Arfiya Eri defeated Kentaro Yazaki, a rookie from the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.

The field was crowded with seven candidates including those backed by Ishin, the Japan Communist Party and the Democratic Party for the People.

Asked to choose their policy priority in a multiple-choice question, three groups of voters, each making up 21 percent, cited, respectively, “money in politics,” “addressing the country’s falling birthrate” and “national security.”

The by-election was called after the district’s LDP lawmaker resigned following a political fund scandal.

Of those who cited “money in politics,” 46 percent voted for Yazaki while 44 percent who chose “national security” cast their ballots for Eri.

The surveys were conducted at 30 polling stations in each constituency with 1,285 respondents in Wakayama, 1,206 in Yamaguchi and 1,396 in Chiba.

Related News