A Primer for the 2025 LDP Presidential Election

Following Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s announcement of his resignation on September 7, the Liberal Democratic Party will hold a presidential election on October 4, with the election period officially opening on September 22. Several lawmakers who participated in last year’s contest have expressed an interest in running again.

Half of the 590 votes will be cast by the party’s 295 members in the two chambers of the National Diet. The other 295 will be allocated proportionally based on the votes of around 1 million LDP rank-and-file members. If a candidate wins an outright majority, he or she will become the new party president. With half of the votes coming from rank-and-file members, candidates with a strong public profile will be at an advantage.

If there is no outright winner in the first round, the leading two candidates will proceed to a runoff. Here, the 295 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 342 votes, meaning that the opinions of lawmakers will have a greater impact. Securing the votes of Diet members who initially chose one of the candidates coming in third or below is key to prevailing in the second round.

In the 2024 election, Ishiba won by 21 votes in the second round, having trailed Takaichi Sanae in the first round with 154 votes to her 181.

Given the LDP’s position as senior coalition partner, the winner of this presidential contest will have a strong chance to step in as prime minister, although this is not necessarily guaranteed as the LDP and junior partner Kōmeitō do not presently hold a majority of seats in either chamber, where voting will take place to select Japan’s next leader.

(Translated from Japanese. Koizumi Shinjirō, second from right, votes in the runoff in the leadership election at the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo on September 27, 2024. © Jiji.)