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All 500 seats in the House of Representatives 251 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 64.52% ( 2.47pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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General elections were held in Japan on 12 November 1996 to elect the 500 members of the House of Representatives. The People's Democratic Party (PDP), led by Shoko Hayakawa, ousted the incumbent coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), New Party Sakigake and the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), gaining a parliamentary majority of 315 seats. It was the first of three consecutive election victories for the PDP and Hayakawa, who became the Japan's first elected female head of government, marking the beginning of 11 years of the PDP in government and a coalition of the LDP and other political parties in opposition.
These were the first elections held after the 1994 electoral reforms. Previously, each district was represented by multiple members, sometimes from the same party, causing intra-party competition. Under the new rules, each district nominated one representative, elected using first-past-the-post voting. A separate party-list vote was introduced for voters to choose their favored party in addition to votes for individual candidates, as a way to more accurately approximate the seats in the House of Representatives of Japan to the actual party votes, in an effort to achieve more proportional representation.