Japan’s Long-Governing Party Is Projected to Lose Its Majority

The Japanese electorate appeared to punish the Liberal Democrats, leaving it unclear whether the party would be forced to expand its coalition to stay in power.

Japan’s governing party was projected to lose its majority in parliamentary elections on Sunday, according to exit polls, as voters delivered an emphatic rejection of the status quo, throwing Japanese politics into its most uncertain period in years.

The Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan for all but four years since 1955, was on pace to lose dozens of seats in an election for the House of Representatives, the influential lower chamber of Parliament, according to the national broadcaster, NHK.

The exit polls showed that the L.D.P. would be unable to secure a simple majority in the 465-seat chamber. It was unclear whether the party could eke out a majority together with its coalition partner, Komeito, or whether it would be forced to expand its coalition to retain power. It was also possible that a group of opposition parties could come together to form a government if the current governing coalition lost its majority.

For over a decade, elections in Japan had taken on a rubber stamp quality for the conservative Liberal Democrats. This time, a wearied public angered by a long-simmering political finance scandal, rising inflation and the burdens of raising families inflicted a humiliating blow to the party just one month after it anointed Shigeru Ishiba as the new prime minister.

The most critical question now, 26 days into his tenure, is whether Mr. Ishiba will survive as prime minister. If he doesn’t, the country might return to the kind of revolving door leadership that has characterized Japanese politics in the past.

“We don’t want such trouble again,” said Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo. “But the situation looks likely to go to a very troubled time.”

Unlike in other countries, where the electorate is divided over ideology and vastly different policy platforms, Japanese voters were frustrated by a sense that all options were uninspiring and that the governing party had grown complacent.

On the eve of Sunday’s voting, Mr. Ishiba, who called the snap election after saying previously that he would wait until later to do so, stopped at a rally for a Liberal Democratic candidate near the Tokyo Dome. Acknowledging the instability in his party, he appealed to the undecided voters standing in the crowd of about 500 that had gathered on the edge of a playground.

“There are many people who haven’t decided whether they will go to vote or not until voting day, and many who haven’t decided who they will vote for until voting day,” said the prime minister, standing on top of a white campaign van in front of a local government office tower. “Who will all of them vote for?”

Both times the Liberal Democrats lost power in the past seven decades, the outcome was widely predicted beforehand. Ever since the party returned to power in 2012 under Shinzo Abe, it has entered elections confident of winning. Now it is possible that the party could lose a majority even in partnership with its traditional coalition ally, Komeito, a political affiliate of Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist sect.

“I didn’t think it would be such a close race,” said Masako Tanaka, 60, a clerical worker at a rally Friday afternoon in Tokyo for a Liberal Democratic lawmaker fighting a tight race against a candidate from the largest opposition party, the Constitutional Democrats.

During campaign rallies, Mr. Ishiba, 67, said he felt “the greatest sense of crisis.” His first approval rating after taking office on Oct. 1 was the lowest of any Japanese prime minister at a similar point since 2002, according to a poll conducted by the newspaper Nihon Keizai and TV Tokyo.

Going into the election, the Liberal Democrats still commanded the highest level of support, with just over 31 percent of voters endorsing the party in a poll by NHK, the public broadcaster. The Constitutional Democrats received support from less than 10 percent of voters surveyed. The largest proportion of voters — 35 percent — said “there is no political party I particularly support.”

The conditions that the Liberal Democrats faced — or arguably had created — recalled the last two times they lost power. In 1993, voters cast out the party after revelations of corruption and a drastic bursting of a real estate bubble that plunged the economy into recession. Seven disparate opposition parties came together to form a government, but it collapsed within just 11 months.

In 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan won in a landslide victory as voters sought to punish the Liberal Democrats for failing to resuscitate the moribund economy. In both of those instances, the opposition did not present a robust vision for change as much as an opportunity for voters to express their frustration with the longtime governing party.

In August, Fumio Kishida said he would resign as prime minister in an attempt to reset the party’s reputation. Analysts said the party and Mr. Ishiba had missed the opportunity to do so.

“I expected Mr. Ishiba would carry out some reforms to get rid of the corrupted image of the L.D.P.,” said Jiro Yamaguchi, a political scientist at Hosei University in Tokyo. But Mr. Ishiba, previously viewed as a politician unafraid to shed party shibboleths, backtracked on several of his more prominent campaign promises. “He looked to be co-opted by the old party system,” Mr. Yamaguchi said.

During debates before the party leadership election, he had floated plans to push for interest rate increases, capital gains taxes, an Asian version of NATO and the revision of an agreement that governs American military forces based in Japan. He indicated he might support a change in the law requiring that married couples use one surname. On all of these proposals, he has already retreated, evidently bowing to party orthodoxy.

Mr. Ishiba also showed an anemic response to the issue that seemed to bother voters most: political finance scandals. For more than a year, the party has failed to restore voter trust after some Liberal Democratic lawmakers were accused of taking kickbacks from the sale of tickets to political fund-raisers.

Although more than 45 politicians were implicated, the prime minister announced that the party would withdraw its endorsement from just a dozen candidates. Nine of them are still running, and last week the Japanese news media revealed that the L.D.P. had transferred 20 million yen — about $131,000 — to local branches of candidates who had lost the party’s endorsement.

In a central Tokyo district where exit polls indicated an opposition candidate from the Constitutional Democratic Party had defeated a prominent Liberal Democrat, Sukerou Asa, 54, a self-employed technology worker, said Sunday that the finance scandal had “quite an impact on my vote this time.”

Although voters had plenty else to be dissatisfied about — including rising food prices, looming demographic pressures from a rapidly aging population and increasing tensions with North Korea and China — the opposition parties seized on the scandals as their most potent rallying cry. More than emphasizing policy differences, the leaders of the Constitutional Democratic Party talked consistently about the Liberal Democrats’ problem of “politics and money.”

Going into the election, analysts projected that stalwart voters, particularly in rural parts of the country where communities depend on government largess, were unlikely to be swayed by the scandals.

“In the rural areas, I would be very surprised if the L.D.P. doesn’t come away with its regular victories,” said Amy Catalinac, an associate professor of politics at New York University who studies pork barrel politics in Japan.

What’s more, she said, the opposition was so divided — at least 12 parties fielded candidates — that it could prevent any other party from dominating. “It’s the silver lining for the L.D.P. that the opposition candidates are numerous,” she said.

As results were trickling in on Sunday night, Masaru Kohno, a political scientist at Waseda University in Tokyo, said that if the governing coalition failed to achieve a majority, it might still be difficult for the multiple parties in opposition to come together to govern.

Yoshihiko Noda, a former prime minister and current leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party, might be reluctant to form a multiparty government, because if a large coalition failed, it would revive memories of the party’s previous failures.

Mr. Ishiba, who represents a rural district in Tottori Prefecture, focused on the far-flung and depopulating regions of Japan in his election rhetoric, calling his efforts “Regional Revitalization 2.0.”

While such measures play to his most loyal base, they could alienate urban voters, said Megumi Naoi, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. “The L.D.P. should be pumping money into the city and talking more about the cities and the hardships of child-rearing voters,” Ms. Naoi said.

If the Liberal Democrats indeed fail to capture a majority, they may be forced to invite other coalition partners to help form a government. Such parties would “have a huge bargaining leverage,” said Masaru Kohno, a political scientist at Waseda University in Tokyo, allowing them to demand cabinet positions or the adoption of favored policies.

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