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Polls: Opposition wins landslide in Japan election

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-30 19:42

TOKYO: Japan's opposition was headed for a historic victory in an election on Sunday, exit polls showed, a win that would oust the long-ruling conservative party and give the untested Democrats the job of reviving a weak economy.

A photographer takes a photograph of posters of politicians from the Democratic Party of Japan at the party's election campaign headquarters in Tokyo August 30, 2009. Japanese voted in a historic election on Sunday that looked set to oust the long-ruling conservative party and give the opposition the job of nurturing a recovery from the country's worst recession since World War Two. [Agencies]

An exit poll by private broadcaster TV Asahi showed the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was on track to win 315 seats in parliament's powerful 480-member lower house.

That projection was in line with other exit polls and matched opinion polls during the campaign that had forecast a big loss for Prime Minister Taro Aso's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

A Democratic Party win would end a half-century of almost unbroken rule by the LDP and break a deadlock in parliament, ushering in a government pledging cash for consumers, a cut in wasteful spending and less power for bureaucrats.

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It would unravel a three-way partnership between the LDP, big business and bureaucrats that turned Japan into an economic juggernaut after the country's defeat in World War Two. That strategy foundered when Japan's "bubble" economy burst in the late 1980s and growth has stagnated ever since.

"This is about the end of the post-war political system in Japan," said Gerry Curtis, a Japanese expert at Columbia University.

"It is the only time any party other than the LDP has won a majority in the lower house of the Diet (parliament). It marks the end of one long era, and the beginning of another one about which there is a lot of uncertainty."

Japanese media will announce further projections based on partial vote counts later on Sunday.

Financial markets have sought an end to the stalemate in parliament, where the Democrats and their allies control the less powerful upper chamber and can delay bills, but bond yields may rise if a new government increases spending.

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