2022 Japanese House of Councillors election
House of Councillors elections were held in Japan on 10 July 2022 to elect 125 of the 248 members of the upper house of the National Diet, for a term of six years. The elections occurred after the assassination of Shinzo Abe, former Prime Minister of Japan on 8 July 2022. The elected candidate with the fewest votes in the Kanagawa prefectural district will serve for three years, as the district combined its regular and byelections.
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125 of the 248 seats in the House of Councillors 125 seats needed for a majority | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 52.05% (3.25pp) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
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The elections occurred within the first year of premiership of Fumio Kishida, President of the Liberal Democratic Party and it saw Kenta Izumi debut as the Leader of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party. The election was overshadowed by the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (served 2006–2007 and 2012–2020), which took place two days before ballots were cast. Abe was shot while delivering a campaign speech for Kei Satō, a member of the House of Councillors running for reelection. The assassin, who had previously served in the Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force, was arrested at the scene and reportedly confessed to targeting Abe due to a grudge he held against the Unification Church. Prime Minister Kishida denounced the assassination as an attack on Japan's democracy and vowed to defend a "free and fair election at all cost". In a post-election survey, 62.5 percent of the voters said their votes were not swayed by the assassination, while 15.1 percent said they were.
The governing Liberal Democratic Party modestly increased its seats in the chamber. Turnout slightly increased compared to the previous election while a new record was set for women elected to the chamber at 28%. Parties supportive of constitutional revision gained a combined total of 93 seats, thus gaining the two-thirds majority needed to trigger the parliamentary procedure which was lost in the 2019 election.
The disparity in the value of a vote between prefectural districts in the election ranged up to 3.03 times, leading to nationwide legal challenges.