{"id":41164,"date":"2026-06-15T16:53:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T16:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/41164\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T16:53:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T16:53:21","slug":"can-takaichi-win-back-conservative-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/41164\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Takaichi win back conservative votes?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Sanae Takaichi was elected the Liberal Democratic Party president and eventually the prime minister, there were high expectations that her ruling party would win back conservative votes lost in the two national elections under her more liberal predecessor.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s now increasingly uncertain whether conservative votes will swing back to the LDP in the upcoming Lower House election<\/a>, as Takaichi\u2019s high approval rates are failing to boost the support rate for her party as much as she hopes.<\/p>\n

In addition, an aggressive campaign strategy on the part of smaller conservative parties could split the votes Takaichi is aiming to secure for the LDP.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the LDP and Japan Innovation Party (JIP) gain a majority, I\u2019ll continue on as prime minister. If not, the nation will have Prime Minister (Yoshihiko) Noda or (Tetsuo) Saito,\u201d she has said. \u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity for people to indirectly choose the prime minister.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since announcing on Jan. 19 her decision to call a snap election, Takaichi has seen her popularity decline slightly, according to some media polls. However, she said on Monday she didn\u2019t feel uneasy about the drop because that is said to happen whenever a prime minister calls an election.<\/p>\n

Takaichi has also made it clear what will happen if the ruling coalition fails to win a majority of seats in the Lower House.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we lose, I will immediately step down,\u201d she said during a Japan National Press Club debate.<\/p>\n

But Noda and Saito, co-leaders of the Centrist Reform Alliance<\/a> (CRA), a new party formed by the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Komeito, may not be the biggest threat for her.<\/p>\n

Sanseito, the small conservative party attempting to win many of the same voters as Takaichi, plans to field candidates against LDP candidates in around 180 single-seat districts. Its strategy is to praise Takaichi but criticize the LDP and other opposition parties in the hope of drawing conservative and nationalist voters who like the prime minister but don\u2019t trust her party.<\/p>\n

In an online interview posted Jan. 17, Sanseito leader Sohei Kamiya said the LDP elected Takaichi as its president and then as prime minister out of fear that if it didn\u2019t elect a leader more along the lines of what his conservative, nationalist party was saying, the ruling party\u2019s candidates would lose.<\/p>\n

\u201cMs. Takaichi emerged from a slightly different, non-mainstream part of the LDP. Her emergence is probably the catalyst for the emergence of Sanseito. But just having her running the party doesn\u2019t mean the LDP\u2019s core values have changed,\u201d Kamiya said.<\/p>\n

In the July 2025 Upper House election, in which half of the chamber\u2019s 248 seats were contested, Sanseito won 14 seats, which took its total…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Sanae Takaichi was elected the Liberal Democratic Party president and eventually the prime minister, there were high…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[701,704,5033,10796,177,179,236,706,180,178,358,2352,5125],"class_list":["post-41164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-2026-lower-house-election","tag-cra","tag-dpp","tag-fumitake-fujita","tag-japans-politics","tag-japanese-politics","tag-ldp","tag-nippon-ishin-no-kai","tag-politics","tag-politics-of-japan","tag-sanae-takaichi","tag-sanseito","tag-sohei-kamiya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}