Electoral Calculus Analysis Team have made the following prediction for the upcoming Japanese General Election on 8 February 2026.
On Sunday, Japanese voters will return to the ballot box for the second time in less than a year; following the 2025 House of Councillors election. Takaichi and the LDP are expected to win the election, returning a comfortable majority.
Opinion polls have consistently demonstrated an uptake for the LDP since Takaichi's leadership election win in October, suggesting Japan's natural party of government will achieve a majority without the need for support from Ishin (JIP), their current coalition partner. An incentive for maintaining the coalition is present in the current governing bloc's capacity to achieve a two thirds supermajority, which would allow Takaichi to bypass legislative opposition in the upper house. As things stand, a landslide is likely with the LDP set to receive 291 seats (260 - 320).
Less than 16 months after the previous general election, the new prime minister and leader of the LDP, Sanae Takaichi has utilised her prerogative to call an early election in order to shore up her party's command of the lower house. Taking advantage of favourable polling, Takaichi is hoping that her party's recent electoral misfortune can be overturned.
Japan uses a parallel voting system for elections to the House of Representatives. Of the 465 seats, 176 are elected in multi-member constituencies under a proportional party list system. The remaining 289 are elected in single member constituencies, under first past the post.
The campaign period of 16 days for the 2026 general election, is the shortest since the end of the Second World War. While this may seem like a trivial fact, it is an electoral strategy deployed by Takaichi in order to maintain the polling momentum she has been enjoying until present. Long election cycles are notorious for cannibalising the vote share of runaway parties and allowing for the consolidation of an opposition vote. Think back to the 2017 UK election, where over the 6-week campaign period the Labour party rose from 25pc of the vote on the day of the election's announcement, to 41pc on election day. However, as a consequence of Takaichi's chosen strategy, she is more likely to be compared to Margaret Thatcher than Theresa May.
After the LDP received 21.6pc of the national vote in the 2025 upper house election, the first party identification poll taken after Takaichi became prime minister pegged the LDP on 31.4pc (21-22 Oct 2025, Kyodo News). The aggregated average of the three most recent polls (at the time of writing), place the party on 37.6pc. A clear upward trend has been established, which suggests that a landslide victory for the LDP is highly likely.
At the actual election, the LDP won a landslide victory as we predicted. The party won 316 seats, which was within our predicted range of 260-320 seats.
The LDP, on its own, now has a two-thirds majority in the lower house.
You can read our original (and time-stamped) prediction Tweet.