LDP Committee Begins Review of Party’s Dismal Election Result; Reported to Be Compiled Within August

By Yuta Abe and Daiki Misawa Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers

20:00 JST, August 1, 2025

A Liberal Democratic Party committee tasked with examining the factors behind the ruling party’s heavy defeat in last month’s House of Councillors election held its first meeting Thursday.

Support for the LDP among young people and conservative voters dropped noticeably in the election, prompting some LDP members to sound the alarm about the public’s loss of confidence in the party.

At the start of the meeting, LDP Secretary General Hiroshi Moriyama, who chairs the committee, expressed apprehension about the current state of the party.

“We mustn’t be afraid to change,” Moriyama said. “I want the party to unite and make efforts to ensure we can gain the trust of many people as a political party.”

Other high-ranking attendees at the meeting held at LDP Headquarters included General Council Chairperson Shunichi Suzuki, Policy Research Council Chairperson Itsunori Onodera and Election Strategy Committee Chairperson Seiji Kihara. Moving forward, the committee will meet with experts, officials from the party’s prefectural chapters, unsuccessful candidates in the upper house race and others to glean their opinions. The committee confirmed at the meeting that it plans to compile a report this month.

The LDP crumbled in the July 20 election and won only 39 seats – the third lowest total in its history. Exit polls conducted by The Yomiuri Shimbun on election day shed light on some of the issues confronting the party.

The polls revealed that 38% of respondents who said they had supported the LDP in the election were aged 70 or older, 20% were in their 60s and 19% were in their 50s. Only 6% were in their 30s and 4% were aged 18 to 29. These numbers clearly illustrate that the LDP was not the preferred choice of younger voters.

Furthermore, only 66% of these LDP supporters voted for the party in the proportional representation segment of the election – 7% said they cast ballots for Sanseito and 5% for the Democratic Party for the People. “We have become increasingly liberal, and our conservative base of supporters have left us,” a midranking LDP member told The Yomiuri Shimbun, expressing a view shared within the party.

Last month’s election shellacking followed a heavy defeat in last year’s House of Representatives election. “I think we should accept that the public is giving up on the LDP,” a former cabinet minister said.

The centerpiece of the LDP’s campaign pledges for the upper house election was a cash handout to combat rising prices. However, this policy failed to excite the public. One senior LDP official said, “We opposed calls by the opposition parties to cut the consumption tax rate, but this suggested we weren’t in touch with people who are struggling to get by.”

Criticism over money scandals that have tarnished the LDP also refuses to fade. Fish Nakata, an LDP candidate who failed to win a seat in the upper chamber election’s proportional representation segment, attended a meeting with party members who has been unsuccessful candidates in the lower house election at party headquarters Thursday.

“People called me ‘foolish’ just because I was running for the LDP,” Nakata told reporters after the meeting. “The party is somehow gaining an increasingly bad reputation.”

Some observers also have suggested that the LDP’s efforts to reach out to voters through social media and videos during the election campaign were not up to scratch. “Just making cosmetic adjustments, such as social media strategies, won’t do anything to change the crisis we’re currently facing,” a concerned young LDP member explained.