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Wednesday, February 11, 2026
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has won the Japanese general election. The House of Representatives includes 465 seats, each with a member. For a party to fully control the House, it needs an outright majority of 233 seats. The LDP won 316 seats, giving the party a supermajority, the first time since World War II. The LDP leader, Sanae Takaichi, strengthened her mandate as the Prime Minister of Japan. The leaders of the Centrist Reform Alliance (Chūdō) (the main opposition party), Yoshihiko Noda and Tetsuo Saito, expressed their intent to resign after their defeat.
Chūdō lost more than two-thirds of its seats, dropping from 167 to 49. Experienced Chūdō candidates Jun Azumi, the secretary-general, Yukio Edano, and Ichirō Ozawa lost to LDP candidates Chisato Morishita, Yutaka Ihara, and Takashi Fujiawara, respectively. However, the 28 candidates of Komeito, which formed Chūdō with the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan prior to the election, all won seats, 4 more than before. There were concerns over Komeito’s prospects after its break with the LDP in October 2025.
The LDP attracted voters with Takaichi’s personal popularity and a strategy of promising populist spending, enthusiastic nationalism, and genuine engagement with younger voters on social media. A clip of Takaichi drumming with South Korean president Lee Jae Myung has gone viral, among others. Her manifesto emphasized tighter regulations on immigration, foreign ownership of Japanese land, and failures to pay tax and health insurance by foreign nationals. This has attracted criticism over its divisiveness. Businesses have expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of her proposed economic policy due to the national debt of Japan. Following the election, Takaichi was seen as being in a position to further escalate the 2025–2026 China–Japan diplomatic crisis and erode pacifism by amending the Constitution of Japan.
The new session of the House will begin on February 18, 2026.
| 2026 Japanese general election (constituency) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
| LDP | Sanae Takaichi | 27,789,183 | 49.23 | +10.77 | |
| Chūdō | Yoshihiko Noda and Tetsuo Saito | 12,209,686 | 21.63 (as CDP and Komeito) | -8.73 | |
| DPP | Yuichiro Tamaki | 4,243,281 | 7.52 | +3.19 | |
| Sanseitō | Sohei Kamiya | 3,924,221 | 6.95 | +4.45 | |
| Ishin | Hirofumi Yoshimura and Fumitake Fujita | 3,742,160 | 6.63 | -4.52 | |
| JCP | Tomoko Tamura | 2,283,885 | 4.05 | -2.76 | |
| GZN–Yukoku | Kazuhiro Haraguchi and Takashi Kawamura | 354,617 | 0.63 | New | |
| Reiwa | Taro Yamamoto | 255,496 | 0.45 | -0.35 | |
| Team Mirai | Takahiro Anno | 156,853 | 0.28 | New | |
| SDP | Mizuho Fukushima | 148,666 | 0.26 | -47.52 | |
| CPJ | Naoki Hyakuta | 97,753 | 0.17 | -37.27 | |
| Others | N/A | 66,308 | 0.12 | N/A | |
| Independent | N/A | 1,174,609 | 2.08 | N/A | |
| Total votes | 56,446,718 | 100.00 | +4.03 | ||
| Registered voters/turnout | 103,880,749 | 54.34 | +0.50 | ||
| 2026 Japanese general election (proportional) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
| LDP | Sanae Takaichi | 21,026,139 | 36.72 | +10.00 | |
| Chūdō | Yoshihiko Noda and Tetsuo Saito | 10,438,801 | 18.23 (as CDP and Komeito) | -13.90 | |
| DPP | Yuichiro Tamaki | 5,572,951 | 9.73 | -1.59 | |
| Ishin | Hirofumi Yoshimura and Fumitake Fujita | 4,943,331 | 8.63 | -0.73 | |
| Sanseitō | Sohei Kamiya | 4,260,620 | 7.44 | +4.01 | |
| Team Mirai | Takahiro Anno | 3,813,749 | 6.66 | New | |
| JCP | Tomoko Tamura | 2,519,807 | 4.40 | -1.76 | |
| Reiwa | Taro Yamamoto | 1,672,499 | 2.92 | -4.06 | |
| CPJ | Naoki Hyakuta | 1,455,563 | 2.54 | +27.05 | |
| GZN–Yukoku | Kazuhiro Haraguchi and Takashi Kawamura | 814,874 | 1.42 | New | |
| SDP | Mizuho Fukushima | 728,601 | 1.27 | -22.04 | |
| Others | N/A | 13,014 | 0.02 | N/A | |
| Total votes | 57,259,949 | 100.00 | +4.97 | ||
| Registered voters/turnout | 103,880,749 | 55.12 | +1.28 | ||
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