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The Yomiuri Shimbun People hold up smartphone lights and glow sticks to react to a candidate in the House of Representatives election on the final day of the campaign period in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, on Saturday.
The Yomiuri Shimbun
18:43 JST, October 27, 2024
Nine political party leaders from the ruling and opposition camps collectively traveled over 1.5 times the Earth’s circumference on campaign tours for Sunday’s House of Representatives election during the 12-day campaign period, according to aggregate calculation by The Yomiuri Shimbun.
The total distance of the nine party leaders’ tours across the nation was 68,921 kilometers. The circumference of the Earth is about 40,000 kilometers.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, traveled the furthest among the nine at 11,015 kilometers.
Between his duties as prime minister, Ishiba visited campaign locations in Tokyo and 22 prefectures from Hokkaido in the north to Kagoshima Prefecture in the south.
He toured mainly places where fiercely contested battles were expected and loudly called on voters to help the ruling camp secure at least 233 lower house seats. This is the number required for a simple majority in the lower house and is the goal Ishiba set.
Yoshihiko Noda, president of the largest opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, traveled 8,931 kilometers.
In his tour, Noda criticized the LDP factions’ political funds problems in constituencies where former LDP lower house members were unable to receive party endorsements due to the scandal.
Japan Innovation Party leader Nobuyuki Baba mainly visited campaign venues in the Kanto region during the initial days of the campaign and then went to western Japan from the middle of the campaign. However, the distance of his tour was the shortest among the nine at 4,682 kilometers.
Keiichi Ishii, leader of the LDP junior coalition partner Komeito, traveled 5,776 kilometers. Because he stayed primarily in his own constituency, where the battle is expected to be fiercely contested, the distance was shorter than that of former party leader Natsuo Yamaguchi, who had traveled around 10,000 kilometers in previous lower house election campaigns.
Japanese Communist Party leader Tomoko Tamura was the only party leader among the nine who visited both Hokkaido and Okinawa Prefecture. She traveled the second greatest distance at 10,797 kilometers.
Yuichiro Tamaki, leader of the Democratic Party for the People, traveled 10,152 kilometers. He delivered speeches on streets near terminal stations in Yokohama and Fukuoka’s Hakata district several times each to attract ballots in the proportional representation races.
The distance covered by Taro Yamamoto, leader of the Reiwa Shinsengumi party, was 5,409 kilometers. Social Democratic Party leader Mizuho Fukushima went 5,551 kilometers. Sanseito leader Sohei Kamiya totaled at 6,608 kilometers.
The distances were calculated by connecting the party leaders’ campaign speech venues with straight lines. Very short-distance travel within municipalities or in Tokyo’s 23 wards were not counted.
