A Primer for the LDP Presidential Election

In the first round of the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election to be held on September 27, 2024, half of the 734 votes will be cast by the party’s 367 members of the two chambers of the National Diet. The other 367 will be allocated proportionally based on the votes of LDP rank-and-file members as of September 11. If a candidate wins an outright majority, he or she will become the new party president, and consequently prime minister.

However, with nine candidates—each of whom has secured a minimum of 20 nominations from Diet members in the party—there is unlikely to be an outright winner in the first round. In this case, the leading two candidates will proceed to a runoff. Here, the 367 Diet members will still have one vote each, but rank-and-file members will be represented by the 47 LDP prefectural chapters with one vote each, for a total of 414 votes. The prefectural chapters’ votes are decided based on which of the two remaining candidates received most votes from its members in the first round.

Diet members’ votes have a greater weight in the second round. Securing the votes of lawmakers who initially chose one of the candidates coming in third or below is key to prevailing at this stage.

In the 2021 election, Kishida Fumio finished the first round a single vote ahead of Kōno Tarō, 256 to 255. He won the second round comfortably, however, by 257 to 170.

Among the five candidates in 2012 were Abe Shinzō and two politicians also contending in 2024: Ishiba Shigeru and Hayashi Yoshimasa. Ishiba won the first round with 199 votes (of which 165 were from rank-and-file members), ahead of Abe with 141 (87 from the rank-and-file). At that time, only Diet members voted in the second round, and Abe turned things around, securing the presidency with 108 votes to 89.

(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo: The nine candidates for LDP president appear at a press conference in Tokyo. © Reuters.)