House of Councillors Election 2010 - The Tokyo DPJ Voter's Quintilemma

Yes, it is a lot like The Restaurant at The End of the Universe

"Brilliant!" he said. [cut] "Totally mad," he said, "utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense."

In politics, what you see is not always what you get.

Pity the poor DPJ-supporting, DPJ-leaning or even DPJ-sympathetic voter of Tokyo. In the upcoming House of Councillors election she will have to choose 5 individuals from out of a list of 24 candidates.

The first two are easy: the DPJ incumbents Ogawa Toshio and Minister for Government Revitalization Renho.

After filling up her DPJ card (the DPJ having made what looks like an error in running only two candidates in a five-way race) the voters still has three more votes to apportion -- and no means of doing so without feeling ill.

For the sake of voting for known moderate conservatives, she could vote for one of the two LDP candidates: incumbent Nakagawa Masaharu or newcomer Tokai Yukiko, a former GE employee and holder of a U.S. journalism degree whose heavily photoshopped campaign posters unfortunately recall the Katayama Satsuki disaster (Katayama, the former Mrs. Masuzoe Yo'ichi for those who are new to this game, is one of the candidates on the Liberal Democratic Party's proportional lists). The actual Ms. Tokai is somewhat (mercifully?) less doe-like in appearance.

However, voting for the candidates of the main opposition party would negate the DPJ voters' main hope, which is to deny the opposition the number of seats it would need to stop the DPJ from controlling the House of Councillors (which is 61 seats, assuming no fiddling with quorums during the Diet sessions).

So Nakagawa and Tokai are out.

Out also is, by dint of association, the attractive and savvy Matsuda Kota, the man who brough Tully's Coffee to Japan. While he would be a shoo-in as an independent, he is unfortunately running on the Your Party (Minna no To) ticket, the DPJ's deadly rival among the urban permanent employee and managerial class vote. A vote for him is as much a vote against the DPJ as a vote for an LDP candidate.

The party that may benefit from confused DPJ voters searching for a way to spend three votes is ironically the Social Democratic Party, the party's whose march out of the coalition precipitated the final collapse of the Hatoyama government. In terms of policy, the choice is insane: the SDP vehemently opposes the current government's acquiescence to the Futenma-to-Henoko shift and the raising of the consumption tax. However, as compared to the other parties and the independents on the ballot, the SDP's got the right attitude: skeptical of the bureaucracy, for consumer rights and for more ecologically and socially gentle government policies.

It does not hurt that the SDP's candidate is a handsome former international NGO worker.

Which leaves 18 candidates on which to spend the remaining 2 votes.

Back in the old days, when comedian/actors like Aoshima Yukio or prominent writers, architects, doctors or whatnot were on the ballot, one could toss a vote in their direction certain one was at least give the country a reason to smile, or, as it turned out in Aoshima's case, doing the country a great favor.

However, the remaining candidates on the Tokyo ballot, both party-affiliated and non-party share candidates, seem to share a common flaw: they apparently are all bats--t crazy.

In a metropolis of 13 million residents, two sane individuals could not find the time, either of their own volition or through the encouragement of friends, to file papers to run for a six-year position with a fabulous salary, extraordinary housing and transportation perquisites, basically three free meals a day, personal and family security, social status and very few responsibilities.

Not even as a lark.

To be fair, Koike Akira is not bats--t crazy. But as the candidate of the Japan Communist Party, he is anathema to all but his party's faithful. Like Matsuda, he would likely win a seat as an independent, especially if he made a special effort to label himself an ex-Communist-running-as-an-independent. Instead, he should go down ignominious defeat with a mere 500,000 votes.

Except...when you have 30%-35% of the voters searching for a sane, non-LDP, non-Your Party alternative, being a JCP candidate may not as much of a handicap to election as it should be.

Now the voter has one vote left. What to do? Right-wing fringe--of which there are so many different flavors one could start up an ice cream store? Unidentified possibly sane independent one has never heard of?

Irony of ironies, the safest place for a DPJ voter to park her last vote? Takeya Toshiko of the New Komeito (and yes, that fade in is creepy).

Even though Takeya's party has been lambasting the DPJ and its policies; is supported mostly by followers of the Soka Gakkai; and was for the last decade the LDP's coalition partner in government, a vote for her will at least fulfill the Hippocratic Oath: cause no harm. The New Komeito has enough votes in Tokyo to get Takeya elected no matter what. One extra vote for her or a million will not make the least bit of difference for her election chances. It will deny a vote from someone else who might otherwise have a chance.

And that is the sad commentary of the state of politics in Tokyo -- that a supporter of the current government has five votes, more than the citizens of any other prefecture (Hurrah!) and not five persons to spend them on.


Later - Twisting Flowers has a less idiosyncratic and actually correct review of the Tokyo race and the races in the triple-seat districts.

Looking ahead to July 11 - the weather

The long-range forecast for election Sunday is rain throughout almost the entire archipelago. Though the assertion sounds immensely stupid, water falling from the sky is probably a plus for the Democratic Party of Japan. Rain tends to discourage folks from taking advantage of a weekend day and leaving their home areas. This should support turnout, which is traditionally and logically crucial for the broadly centrist DPJ over all of its machine-based and association membership-based electoral rivals. Going out to vote may be for many the one outing of the day, combining a small bit of social responsibility with a few minutes of exercise outside the confines of the home. Rain will also probably increase television viewership and newspaper readership, which is again to the DPJ's advantage. Brevity and ignorances are the allies of the minor parties, if not their very lifeblood. Once the voter has the time to listen to their speeches or read about the policies at length, it becomes clear that they are all peddling what is at best inanity and at worst insanity.

Faith In Numbers (1)

In the dip in the popularity polls of the Kan Cabinet after the quite responsible shout out by Prime Minister Kan Naoto to the Liberal Democratic Party to stop the catcalls from the sidelines and instead join with the ruling coalition in reforming country's revenues base (i.e. - raise taxes) the nation's liberal news organizations are beginning to lose their marbles panicking.

Here are the latest seat projections for the various parties in the upcoming House of Councillors election from The Asahi Shimbun.

And here are the projections from the Tokyo Shimbun


According to the median view of the of the Asahi, the DPJ will end up with exactly the same number of seats -- 54 -- in the House of Councillors as it now controls. In the Tokyo Shimbun, the party will actually lose two spots, slipping to 52 seats. In both cases, the DPJ will have to go hat in hand post election in search of (a) coalition parther(s), as it needed to win 60 seats in order to have a 50%+1 majority in the House of Councillors.

Not having a majority in the upper house is not the end of the world, of course. The most important piece of legislation, the national budget, goes into effect 30 days after it is passed by the House of Representatives, no matter what the House of Councillors does with it. The DPJ holds a comfortable 307 out of 482 480 seats* majority in the House of Representatives - so the budget is safe. However, for all other legislation or the confirmation of officials, the DPJ will have to rely on the kindness of strangers to make it to the 122 votes it needs to get anything done on the legislative front.

There also so problematic issues of control of committee chairmanships in the House of Councillors should the DPJ fail to win an outright majority. These are not on a par, however, with the simple fact that no legislation is guaranteed passage without a 50%+1 majority of the House of Councillors members present -- which opens up some interesting opportunities in the case the DPJ fall just a few votes short of an absolute majority for sudden absences of independents from the chambers at crucial moments. Two of the seven independent members of the House of Councillors are up for reelection this year, meaning that at very least, in the next Diet session, 119 votes might be sufficient for passage of legislation which the DPJ really want to see passed.

Anyway, both the projected polls leave the DPJ far short of the majorities it needs. Just how they do this seems unsound.

First is the pass given to the microparties in both polls. There are not just five, as listed in both sets of results. There are eight seven. Two of the left: the Social Democratic Party and the Women's Party. Six on the right: People's New Party, Sunrise Party (Tachiagare Nippon), New Renaissance Party (Shinto kaikaku), The Spirit of Japan (Nihon Soshinto) and the Happiness Realization Party.

The larger the number of little parties, the greater likelihood they will zero each other out the d'Hondt system, which is the method used to assign seats in the proportional part of the election. In each of the last three House of Councillors elections a party had to secure 2.2% of the national vote to win even a single proportional seat. At present, only the SDP is polling greater than 2%.

To see how the winnowing process happens, check out the wonderful d'Hondt system calculator here.

Using the calculator, I have run a basic scenario, assuming conservatively that

1) just as many voters show up in 2010 as in 2007
2) skeptical non-aligned voters choose Your Party as the non-DPJ, non-LDP alternative
3) that the Communists and the Socialists stay put
4) that Your Party captures the business lobby vote
5) that the conservative microparties steal votes that would have gone to the LDP, and
6) some voters will vote for the LDP out of nostalgia or force of habit

The results of the simulation, which you can see here, assigns the 48 available proportional seats this way:

DPJ 19
LDP 11
New Komeito 6
Your Party 6
Japan Communist Party 3
Democratic Socialist Party 2
Sunrise 1

One can fiddle about and get New Renaissance a seat that the cost of one DPJ seat. However, failing a huge jump in turnout of folks boiling mad at the DPJ, these are likely to be the results we see in the morning paper on July 12.

Sic transit nunc gloria the microparties and their purported seats.

If my simulation can be faulted, it is for being too generous to the LDP. The party chose last year to run as the anti-Ozawa Ichiro party, choosing stances not based upon their logical coherence but on whether or not Ozawa was for them or against them. Other than anti-Ozawaism, the party failed to produce a convincing reason for its wavering supporters to stick around, the reason why Masuzoe Yo'ichi quit, dismissing "LDP" as the acronym for "Lousy Dumb Party."

Which brings up my second, much larger objection to the Asahi and Tokyo Shimbun projections: the presumption of viability of the LDP as a political force in the district elections - the subject of my next post.

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*Kobayashi Chiyomi resigned from her seat the day after the close of the regular Diet session. The by-election for her Hokkaido #5 district seat will be in October. One other seat is also vacant.

Inherit the Wind

Ozawa Ichiro's keeping quiet -- so he is following Prime Minister Kan Naoto's suggestion that he do so for the good of the nation, the party and himself.

It is seems the Old Toad has read the fine print, though. He was asked to keep quiet, not stay silent.

Whilst campaigning in Yamanashi Prefecture on Thursday for his buddy Koshi'ishi Azuma (Doesn't Koshi'ishi's website make just hop on the Chuo Line and go to Yamanashi right now?) Ozawa made a rather public visit to the grave of Kanemaru Shin, a rather interesting and embarrassing choice of local worthies to honor with a visit at election time.

After a roadside speech to about 40 local residents, Ozawa also uttered his first words of criticism of the new DPJ regime since its installation three weeks ago. They were hardly hair-raising quotes: he told reporters he thought Kan's goal of leading the party to winning "54 seat plus alpha" too weak, saying that the goal of a ruling party is to win a majority (which in the case of this upcoming election means 60 or more seats - a goal that Kan yesterday declared he would "spare no effort in achieving"). Ozawa also said that in order to improve the Japan's fiscal position, raising the consumption tax should not be done soon -- that the party's stated goal is to get rid of as much wasteful spending as possible first.

On Friday, up in Aomori, Ozawa got a little bolder, playing the concern troll regarding the decision to talk about raising the consumption tax in the run up to an election. He dangerously chose to play the city/country dichotomy card --- shining a light on the truth that cannot speak its name, that following this election the DPJ intends to terminate the countryside's dependency on largess and support from the center, forcing the countryside to either pull itself up by its bootstraps or fail -- saying, "The prime minister seems to talk continuously about [raising the tax to 10%] but out here in the countryside, as compared to the city, the economic situation is severe. If you talk out [in the countryside] about a 10% consumptipon tax, for myself this gives me tremendous worries."

Just to throw salt in the wound, Ozawa reminded listeners that under the Hatoyama Administration (of which he, of course, was the string puller) the DPJ had issued a public promise to not raise the consumption tax for three to four years.

Way to be a team player when your party needs you, Ozawa-san.

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For an explanation of the title, see Proverbs 11:29. For some photos of a few of Yamanashi's places to visit, check out a few selections from the Flickr site.

Notes to the Wise

Keep up with Sigma1, Nejibana and Paul Jackson's Tokyo Notes.

They are doing their darndest to keep us from being ignorant.

Call Me Unreliable

Dear MTC,

Exactly how, if we are to go by your projected vote results, is the Komeito going to win four district seats when the party is only fielding three district candidates?

Uhhh...electoral magic?

For a text a little less magical, please check out my expanded piece on Kan and the consumption tax picked up by the very kind folks at PanOrient News, a fledgling English/Japanese/Arabic news service.

Sincerely,

And the Home of the Brave

Just four weeks ago, we were looking, with not an insignificant amount of despair, at a 2010 House of Councillors election being fought over whether or not the PM is such a dufus that did not actually know how $14,000,000 of donations from his mom were handled in his accounts; whether Ozawa Ichiro is or is not Richard III; over whether the Democratic Party of Japan should be castigated for making promises it could not keep (because they were fiscally unsound) or for not keeping those promises; over how far backwards the DPJ was willing to bend -- to the small-scale farmers, to the trucking industry, to the postmasters and the postal unions -- in giving them what they wanted to the detriment of the national weal.

An ugly, dispiriting exercise, in other words.

Now, just a few weeks later, with Hatoyama Yukio, Kamei Shizuka and Ozawa Ichiro sent to the sidelines, the public is being hit with a hard, inconvenient truth -- the country takes in too little revenue to pay for the services the public has come to expect, meaning that taxes will have to be raised -- and that the voters will have to make their choices in the election booth based in large part on the soundness of their plans the various parties have put forther confronting that inconvenient truth.

On May 2, just a month and a half ago, the Tokyo Shimbun ran an explainer article, a little Socratic dialogue about the struggle inside the ruling coalition over when the subject of raising taxes will be broached: before the election, after the election or never.

Q: "So if the experts and the politicians both are thinking the same way, then it is in fact already decided that tax rates will be raised?"

A: "No, no, no. While you are likely to hear expressions like 'We will have to with haste grapple with fundamental reform of the tax system, including the raising of the consumption tax", nobody is brave enough to say what the new tax rate will be or when it will come into effect. Because whatever the government's plan is, it will be in effect a part of the DPJ's manifesto for the House of Councillors election."

Q: "And the DPJ has made a public promise to raise the consumption tax before, hasn't it?"

A: "Yes, in the DPJ's 2005 House of Representatives election manifesto the party put forth a plan to raise the consumption tax rate exclusively in order to stabilize the pension system. However, in that election, the DPJ suffered a landslide loss."

Nobody is brave enough...while it is true that Prime Minister Kan Naoto, DPJ Secretary-General Edano Yukio and Chief Cabinet Secretary Sengoku Yoshito are calling the bluff of the Liberal Democratic Party, which had challenged the ruling coalition to show some guts and talk about raising the consumption tax to 10% - a number the LDP never dared mention when it was in power save as a hypothetical -- it is not hyperbole to say that they have proven the Tokyo Shimbun wrong. The DPJ's new core leadership knows that talk of raising taxes is political poison. The party has taken a body blow (as did the LDP before it under Takeshita Noboru and Hashimoto Ryutaro) for talking honestly about Japan's fiscal situation and the unpleasant business of rebalancing the whole.

Let the tough talk continue. Hurrah.

(This post has been reedited for clarity, based upon a reader's comment. - MTC)

Let Me Guess - Just Guess

Today is when the starter's gun goes off in the great scamble for seats in the July 11 House of Councillors election. There is a great deal speculation in the air and a flood of analysis yet to come...but let me venture a very rough early estimate of the final results based solely on the polls, not the individual candidates.

That must wait for another rainy day.

In the meantive, my guess is:

Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ): 66 seats (43 district and 23 proportional)

Liberal Democratic Party of Japan: 31 seats (21 district and 10 proportional)

New Komeito: 11 seats (4 district and 7 proportional)

Your Party (Minna no To): 8 seats (2 district and 6 proportional)

Social Democratic Party of Japan (DSP): 3 seats (1 district and 2 proportional)

Communist Party of Japan (JCP): 3 seats (3 proportional)

Sunrise Party (Tachiagare Nippon): 1 seat (1 proportional)

All other parties: 0 seats


Over the next few weeks I will offer refinements and backup information on the individual races. An overwhelming victory will give Prime Minister Kan Naoto and his Cabinet the authority they will need to remake Japan according to both standard DPJ priniciples and the current, rapidly changing geo-political and geo-economic order. With comfortable majorities in both Houses of the Diet, the Diet will pass any legislation leaderhip may cook up -- and it has plenty of projects in the sketchy stage.

At which point, the revolution will most certainly be on.

The June 19-20 Kyodo Poll - The Small Price of Honesty

After the polls close on July 11, and the various and sundry winners shout their banzais or bow deeply and take responsibility for their failures, this blessed land will still have to be governed, and clearly under a radically different and likely painful new system of fiscal balance. The leaders of the Democratic Party of Japan, with no small amount of cheerleading from the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Finance, have called the bluff of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan on the matter of raising taxes to bring the budget into primary balance.

Of course the Kan government and the DPJ have paid a price.

* * *	Most recent	Previous
Cabinet support
Asahi	50%	59%
Yomiuri	55%	59%
Kyodo	59%	65%
Will vote for DPJ in proportional vote	-	-
Asahi	36%	43%
Yomiuri	30%	31%
Kyodo	26.3%	29.4%
Will vote for the LDP in the proportional vote	-	-
Asahi	17%	14%
Yomiuri	14%	16%
Kyodo	15.8%	14.5%

Normally, no sane party would talk about raising taxes before an election. Certainly, the prime minister has been backtracking a bit on the pledge. Nevertheless, the new core DPJ leadership grasped the nettle of public finance, talking about doubling the consumption tax -- and has suffered little for it. Its opponents, the LDP, have certainly not reaped a windfall from this supposed fundamental political blunder of being honest about the hole Japan finds itself in.

While being honest about the need to increase taxes may lose the DPJ a few seats, losing those seats seems a heck of small price to pay compared to coming back to the voters, hat in hand, pleading, "Sorry, we were not entirely truthful during the campaign. We cannot balance the budget merely through squeezing out wasteful spending. We really do need to raise taxes. OK?"

In 2009, Hatoyama Yukio and Ozawa Ichiro tried to convince the voters that taxes do not need to be raised to bring the budget into balance. After the government put the bureaucrats and their perks through the ringer in the Government Revitalization Unit proces, the amount of grease extracted was 1% of just one year's budget. The government then produced a budget where borrowing was greater than revenues.

Folks notice that kind of thing.

So while the papers are braying (chortling even) about the sudden drop in the support level of the Cabinet and the DPJ from the euphoric heights hit following the downfall of the spend-til-you-drop Hatoyama and Ozawa and their replacement by the Neo-Kan fiscal conservatives (yes, that one is mine, I claim it) the press need to give the Cabinet and the leading party of the ruling coalition something of a break.

The Kan government has treated the electorate like adults...and has survived the experiment.

House of Councillors - The Basic Numbers

Based on what seems to be a request from a commenter...

Number of seats, total: 242

Terms in office: 6 years, with half the seats up for election at staggered three year intervals

Total number of district seats: 146

Total number of party proportional seats: 96

Total seats currently occupied: 241 (one vacancy)

Total needed for a simple majority: 122

Current number of seats held by the DPJ+Shifuryokukai*+PNP+JNP** caucus: 122

Current make up of majority caucus: DPJ/Shinfuryokukai (116), PNP (5), JNP (1)

Number of seats up for election: DPJ/Shinfuryokukai (54), PNP (2), JNP (0)

Number of seats DPJ needs to win in order to have independent control of the House of Councillors: 60 ( 54+6 )

Number of seats up for election in single seat districts: 29

Number of seats up for election in two seat districts: 24

Number of seats up for election in three seat districts: 15

Number of seats up for election in a five seat district: 5

Number of seats up for election in the party proportional election: 48


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* Defunct organization.

** Though Hirayama Makoto caucuses with the majority in the name of the Japan New Party, the Japan New Party does not consider him a party member.