In the elections for the Senate, he obtained 5.9% in the age group of 20 to 30 years. The Liberal Democratic Party is down 40% after years. The new ultra-conservative formation is anti-globalization and anti-immigration. He also wants an increase in the military budget and a revision of the “pacifist” constitution.
Tokyo () – The Sanseito party, inspired by Trump’s proposal, is stealing the young vote from the liberal Democrats, the main political force in the country. It is one of the most striking data of the recent elections for the partial renewal of the upper house of the national parliament, controlled by the Liberal Democratic Party of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. However, that formation is suffering a decline in support in the younger electorate.
In his first electoral contest for the Senate, Sanseito won 1.8 million votes and one seat. The party led by Ayako Lawrence has a very conservative political platform: anti-globalization, anti-immigration, favorable to a revision of the “pacifist” Constitution and an increase in military spending, with an eye toward the need to preserve national “dignity.”
Several observers believe that it is the re-proposal in a Japanese key of the “America first” campaign that brought Donald Trump to the White House in 2016. A message that seems to have found an echo in the young Japanese orphans of Shinzo Abe, the former nationalist prime minister assassinated on the eve of the elections.
Among Japanese 20-somethings, Sanseito got 5.9% in the proportional vote. In this age group, the Liberal Democrats lose 3.5% and fall below 40%, a level that had been systematically exceeded since Abe’s return to power in 2012. Young voters also lost the Buddhist Komeito, which governs with Kishida, and the traditional oppositions: the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Communists.
Many young people opted for two other small formations on the rise: the People’s Democratic Party and Nippon Ishin. However, however, the trend of the youth vote seems to reward the Sanseito more. According to analysts quoted by Nikkei Asia, young Japanese are particularly attracted to two points in the electoral program of the ultra-conservative party: the increase in the defense budget and the cut in the consumption tax.
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