According to early results, the LDP and their allies appeared to have won about 312 seats, while opposition parties took about 126. Precise numbers were not immediately available due to the impact of a typhoon, which prevented votes from being counted in 12 precincts.<\/p>\n
The win could provide Abe with a legacy as Japan\u2019s \u201cComeback Kid.\u201d After a summer in which his approval rating fell below 30 percent at times, the election results could run for a third term as LDP leader next year, which would make him Japan\u2019s longest-serving prime minister.<\/p>\n
What might be most surprising about this is that Abe\u2019s policies aren\u2019t particularly popular among the Japanese public. One of his key campaign points was an attempt to amend the Japanese Constitution to explicitly legalize the Japanese military, known as the Self-Defense Forces. That\u2019s part of a hawkish approach to North Korea that didn\u2019t sit well with much of the nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is an Abe conundrum,\u201d Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo, told the New York Times<\/em>. \u201c[He] is basically unpopular with voters, [his] policies are not particularly popular, [he] doesn\u2019t get high marks for leadership, and yet he keeps winning in elections.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe scored an overwhelming political victory on Sunday, as his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and their coalition partners appeared to have captured two-thirds of the seats in the House of Representatives, the lower house of the national Diet (parliament). The results are widely seen as a vote of approval for Abe\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":61396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,13,18,61],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Shinzo Abe Election Win May Improve Odds of Casinos for Japan<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n