2012 Japanese general election
General elections were held in Japan on 16 December 2012. Voters gave the Liberal Democratic Party a landslide victory, ejecting the Democratic Party from power after three years. It was the fourth worst defeat suffered by a ruling party in Japanese history.
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All 480 seats in the House of Representatives 241 seats needed for a majority | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 59.31% (9.88pp) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
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Voting took place in all representatives' constituencies of Japan including proportional blocks, in order to appoint Members of Diet to seats in the House of Representatives, the lower house of the National Diet of Japan.
In July 2012, it was reported that the deputy prime minister Katsuya Okada had approached the Liberal Democratic Party to sound them out about dissolving the House of Representatives and holding the election in January 2013. An agreement was reached in August to dissolve the Diet and hold early elections "shortly" following the passage of a bill to raise the national consumption tax. Some right-wing observers asserted that as the result of introducing the consumption tax to repay the Japanese public debt, the DPJ lost around 75% of its pre-election seats.