General elections are scheduled to be held in Japan no later than 27 October 2028 to elect all 465 seats of the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

, the

lower house A lower house is the lower chamber of a bicameral legislature, where the other chamber is the upper house. Although styled as "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has come to wield more power or otherwise e ...

of the

National Diet , transcription_name = ''Kokkai'' , legislature = 215th Session of the National Diet , coa_pic = Flag of Japan.svg , house_type = Bicameral , houses = , foundation=29 November 1890(), leader1_type ...

. Voting will take place in all constituencies, including 289 single-seat electoral districts and 11 proportional blocks (176 seats). The 2024 general election resulted in a

hung parliament A hung parliament is a term used in legislatures primarily under the Westminster system (typically employing Majoritarian representation, majoritarian electoral systems) to describe a situation in which no single political party or pre-existing ...

and the formation of a

minority government A minority government, minority cabinet, minority administration, or a minority parliament is a government and cabinet formed in a parliamentary system when a political party or coalition of parties does not have a majority of overall seats in ...

based upon a Liberal Democratic Party- Komeito coalition under

Prime Minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

Shigeru Ishiba Shigeru Ishiba (born 4 February 1957) is a Japanese politician who has served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since 2024. He has been a member of ...

. An election may occur before the scheduled date if the Prime Minister dissolves Parliament for a snap election or if the

passes a motion of no confidence in the government. Early elections are more likely during minority governments, as the Prime Minister does not command a majority in the

Background

The 2024 general election resulted in the loss of majority of the Liberal Democratic Party- Komeito governing coalition under

. The election will likely take place after: *

2025 Japanese House of Councillors election The 27th general election of the House of Councillors is scheduled to be held in Japan by 20 July 2025 to elect 124 of the 248 members of the House of Councillors, the upper house of the National Diet, for a term of six years. The elections wil ...

(scheduled in summer 2025)

Electoral system

The 465 seats of the

are contested via

parallel voting In political science, parallel voting or superposition refers to the use of two or more Electoral system, electoral systems to elect different members of a legislature. More precisely, an electoral system is a superposition if it is a mixture o ...

. Of these, 289 members are elected in single-member constituencies using

first-past-the-post voting First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or first-preference, and the candidate with more first- ...

, while 176 members are elected in 11 multi-member constituencies via party list proportional representation. Candidates from parties with legal political party-list, which requires either ≥5 Diet members or ≥1 Diet member and ≥2% of the nationwide vote in one tier of a recent national election, are allowed to stand in a constituency and be present on the party list. If they lose their constituency vote, they may still be elected in the proportionally allocated seats. However, if such a dual candidate wins less than 10% of the vote in their majoritarian constituency, they are also disqualified as a proportional candidate.

Political parties

Opinion polling

Party Identification Polling for the Next Japanese General Election

Notes

References

{{Japanese elections General elections in Japan

General A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air force, air and space forces, marines or naval infantry. In some usages, the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colone ...