Abe sweeps to resounding victory in Japan vote

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe swept to a resounding victory in a snap election Sunday and immediately vowed to “deal firmly” with threats from North Korea that dominated the campaign. Abe’s conservative coalition was on track to win 311 seats in the 465-seat parliament, according to a projection from private broadcaster TBS, putting the nationalist premier on course to become Japan’s longest-serving leader. The resounding election win is likely to stiffen Abe’s resolve to tackle North Korea’s nuclear threat, as the key US regional ally seeks to exert maximum pressure on Pyongyang after it fired two missiles over Japan in the space of a month. “As I promised in the election, my imminent task is to firmly deal with North Korea,” Abe said. “For that, strong diplomacy is required,” stressed Abe, 63. Abe was heading for a “landslide win”, the top-selling Yomiuri daily said on its website, as the premier’s gamble to hold a snap election appeared to be paying off. But it was unclear in the immediate aftermath of the vote whether his coalition would retain its two-thirds “supermajority,” requiring 310 seats, as some media had it falling just short.

‘Very severe result’

Support for the Party of Hope founded by popular Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike fizzled after an initial blaze of publicity and it was on track to win around 50 seats, the TBS projection suggested. The new centre-left Constitutional Democratic Party fared slightly better than expected but still trailed far behind Abe with 58 seats. “The LDP’s victory is simply because the opposition couldn’t form a united front,” said political scientist Mikitaka Masuyama from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.