Turnout: 56.25%
About this election
Japan held a snap general election (sosenkyo) for the 465-seat House of Representatives on 8 February 2026, called by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Running on its own after its long-time partner Komeito had moved into a separate electoral alliance, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won a commanding 316 seats on 36.72% of the proportional vote and 49.09% in the single-member districts — described as a historic landslide and the most seats ever won by a single party in Japan's post-war history, enough for a two-thirds supermajority on its own. The Centrist Reform Alliance (a grouping of the Constitutional Democratic Party and Komeito) finished a distant second on 49 seats, ahead of the Japan Innovation Party (Ishin) on 36, the Democratic Party for the People on 28, Sanseito on 15 and the newcomer Team Mirai on 11. Turnout was 56.25%.
The LDP has dominated Japanese politics for almost the entire post-war era, governing continuously from 1955 to 2009 and again from 2012. The party was badly damaged in the October 2024 election by a political-funding scandal, losing its majority and entering a period of unstable minority government. Sanae Takaichi, a veteran of the party's conservative wing, became Japan's first female prime minister in 2025 and called the 2026 snap election to seek a fresh mandate. The result vindicated that gamble emphatically, restoring the LDP to a position of dominance it had not held for years.
The House of Representatives is elected by a parallel mixed system: 289 members are returned from single-member districts by first-past-the-post, and 176 from proportional-representation lists in 11 regional blocs, with a 2% PR threshold. Voters cast two ballots, one for a local candidate and one for a party list. The prime minister is designated by the House and governs for as long as he or she commands its confidence. The separate House of Councillors (the upper house) is elected on its own staggered six-year cycle and was not contested in this election.
The LDP, a big-tent conservative party, ran independently and swept the field. The Centrist Reform Alliance brought together the centre-left Constitutional Democratic Party and the LDP's former coalition partner Komeito. The right-leaning Japan Innovation Party (Ishin), strong in the Osaka region, and the centrist Democratic Party for the People (DPP) each held a bloc of seats, while the nationalist Sanseito and the new reformist Team Mirai won smaller but notable representation. The once-significant Japanese Communist Party was reduced to a handful of seats.
The conservative surge was driven by external security anxieties — China's growing military assertiveness and North Korea's continuing missile programme — and by economic pressures, especially the weak yen's effect on the cost of imports, after months in which a minority cabinet had struggled to govern. Voters who wanted decisive, stable government rewarded the LDP. With a supermajority of its own, Takaichi was comfortably re-elected prime minister by the new House, reportedly with 354 of 465 votes.
The scale of the win stands out against the recent past. The LDP lost power entirely in 2009, returned under Shinzo Abe in 2012, and then slipped below a majority in the scandal-hit 2024 election. The 2026 result reversed that decline in a single stroke, producing the largest single-party haul of the post-war period and ending the brief experiment with minority government.
Governing alone with a two-thirds majority gives Takaichi unusual freedom of action, including on constitutional and security questions that require supermajorities to advance. Japan's longer-term structural challenges — an ageing and shrinking population, a low birth rate and record public debt — remain the backdrop against which the new government will be judged.
One of the structural stories of the election was the end of the LDP-Komeito partnership in its old form. Komeito, the LDP’s coalition ally for roughly a quarter of a century, contested this election within the separate Centrist Reform Alliance alongside the Constitutional Democratic Party, leaving the LDP to run on its own. Under Japan’s mixed system, a single large party facing a divided opposition can convert pluralities in the single-member districts into a disproportionately large block of seats — a dynamic that helped turn the LDP’s 36.72% proportional share into a 316-seat supermajority.
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan — soumu.go.jp.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.