LDP Sweeps Lower House in Historic Rebound

The Yomiuri Shimbun

16:46 JST, February 9, 2026

The Liberal Democratic Party secured 316 seats — the highest postwar total for any party — in Sunday’s House of Representatives election. After results were finalized on Monday, the party was up by 118 seats from before the lower house’s dissolution. One seat came from a candidate the party endorsed after he was elected.

The Japan Innovation Party gained two seats, bringing its total to 36. The two ruling parties now hold a total of 352 seats, or 75.7% of the 465 lower house seats.

The Centrist Reform Alliance took just 49 seats, around 30% of the 167 seats its members held previously. Only seven of its candidates won in constituencies.

The Democratic Party for the People gained one seat for a total of 28.

Sanseito, which held two seats previously, secured 15. Team Mirai won its first lower house seats and now has 11.

The Japanese Communist Party had its holdings in the chamber halved, down to four seats. Reiwa Shinsengumi lost seven seats and Genzei Yukoku lost four, with each retaining a single seat.

2nd Takaichi cabinet to launch

The day after the LDP’s historic landslide victory, the ruling bloc began preparing to form Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s second cabinet.

Takaichi was to hold a meeting with JIP leader Hirofumi Yoshimura on Monday afternoon to confirm that the two parties would continue to govern in coalition.

It is the first time a single party has secured a two-thirds majority in the lower house since the end of World War II.

“We must deliver results that match the number of seats we hold,” Takayuki Kobayashi, chair of the LDP’s Policy Research Council, told reporters Monday in Yachiyo, Chiba Prefecture, following the election results.

During a TV program on Sunday, Takaichi indicated she wants the JIP to join the cabinet. “My desire [for the JIP] to share responsibility within the cabinet remains unchanged,” she said.

The JIP has not yet made clear its stance.

The government and ruling bloc plan to convene a special Diet session as early as Feb. 18 to form the second Takaichi cabinet that day, after Diet members vote on the next prime minister. Takaichi has planned on reappointing most of the ministers from her first Cabinet, but will make changes if JIP lawmakers join the cabinet.