Hokkaido 5th district
Hokkaidō 5th district (Hokkaidō [dai-]go-ku (北海道[第]5区)) is a constituency of the House of Representatives in the Diet of Japan. It consists of Atsubetsu ward and a portion of Shiroishi ward in Hokkaido's city of Sapporo and Ishikari Subprefecture excluding Sapporo and Ishikari city. As of 2009, 453,752 eligible voters were registered in the district.
| Hokkaidō 5th District | |
|---|---|
| Parliamentary constituency for the Japanese House of Representatives | |
Numbered map of Hokkaidō Prefecture single-member districts | |
Sapporo-area detail | |
| Prefecture | Hokkaidō |
| Proportional District | Hokkaidō |
| Electorate | 467,864 (2021) |
| Current constituency | |
| Created | 1994 |
| Seats | One |
| Party | LDP |
| Representative | Yoshiaki Wada |
| Created from | Hokkaidō's 1st "medium-sized" district |
| Municipalities | Sapporo's Atsubetsu Ward and Ishikari Subprefecture |
The district was created in the 1994 electoral reform from parts of the previous 1st district where six representatives had been elected by single-non-transferable vote. Representatives from the old 1st district included Kingo Machimura and his son Nobutaka Machimura.
Nobutaka Machimura (LDP, Machimura faction) safely won the new 5th district in the 1996 election and defended it against Democratic challenger Chiyomi Kobayashi in subsequent elections. However, the Democratic Party won the general election of 2009 handily, and Kobayashi defeated Machimura by 30,000 votes. In response to a political funds scandal, she resigned in June 2010. Machimura resigned from his seat in the Hokkaidō proportional block to run in the resulting by-election in October 2010 and defeated former construction ministry bureaucrat Shigeyuki Nakamae by a clear margin to regain his district seat.
In the 24 April 2016 by-election, Machimura's son-in-law, Liberal Democrat Yoshiaki Wada (Kōmeitō, Kokoro, Daichi) defeated united opposition independent Maki Ikeda (DP, JCP, SDP, PLP).