The Japanese leader’s election gambit, fueled by the power of her personality and some unlikely help from young voters consumed by “Sanamania,” appears to have paid off.
Japan’s conservative prime minister Sanae Takaichi has won a landslide victory after she gambled on a high-stakes snap election.
Takaichi, who took office in October after being elected leader of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), surpassed the 310 seats needed for a supermajority in the 465-seat lower house, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported from the official election count on Sunday evening. The supermajority allows her ruling coalition to override the upper house, where it lacks a majority.
An NHK exit poll as voting ended earlier on Sunday projected the LDP would win between 274 and 326 seats. The party and its coalition partner Ishin were projected to win a combined 302-366 seats, as voters turned out amid freezing temperatures in a rare winter election.
Currently, in Japan, it is a major issue that her party’s video has been viewed 160 million times on YouTube. Of course, the majority of those views are thought to have been for advertising purposes.
She is a far-right politician who advocates “countermeasures against foreigners,” but she paid a large sum of money to Google, a foreign tech giant, to win the election.
At the very least, online election advertising will likely be an issue for discussion in the upcoming Diet session.