Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will lose its parliamentary majorityaccording to projections by the state broadcaster NHK about the general elections held this Sunday.
The projections do not clarify for now whether the PLD will be able to join together with its current government partner, the Buddhist party Komeito, enough votes to reach the 233 seats that would allow them to continue in power.
According to estimates by the Japanese public broadcaster, NHK, the PLD would obtain between 153 and 219 seats, which would mean not reaching the simple majority on its own and the biggest drop for the formation since 2009when the defunct Democratic Party of Japan took power.
For its part, its coalition partner until now, Komeito, would manage to win between 21 and 35 seats, while the main opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party (PDC) of Yoshihiko Noda -the last leader of a party other than the PLD- would achieve between 128 and 191 parliamentary seats.
PLD and Komeito would need to add at least 233 seats of the 465 that make up the Lower House of the Japanese Parliament to remain at the forefront of the Asian country. Before these elections, they had respectively 256 and 32 seats, giving them a comfortable majority of 288 seats.
These estimates point to results hugely tight In elections that already seemed very uncertain for the PLD led by the prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba.
The PLD called the early elections just a month after Ishiba won his party’s primaries, mired in a deep popularity crisis due to a succession of scandals which ended with the resignation last September of the previous prime minister, Fumio Kishida.
The official results of the elections held this Sunday in Japan are expected to be known during monday morning (local time), although projections based on exit polls carried out by the Japanese media usually offer a very reliable photograph of what happened.
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