The result of Street Poll
“Which party will you vote for in the next national election?”“Do you agree or disagree with the single-seat constituency system?”February 22, 2016
Wind of Citizens toward Uniting for Peace
Satsukiso 201, Iwase 46-2, Matsudo City,
Chiba Pref 271-0076, JAPANtel/fax:047-360-1470
http://kaze.fm/
join@kaze.fm（1）Purpose and Summary of the Survey
Objective: To objectively understand the preference for political parties as vote choice inthe next national election and pros and cons for the single-seat constituency system.
Period: From November 1, 2015 through to February 6, 2016
Location: 21 places in Tokyo
Total number of times: 25 times
Method: Street interview using seal voting
Respondents to the question "Which party will you vote for in the next national election ?”:1090
Respondents to the question “Do you agree or disagree with the single-seat constituency
system?”: 1060
Respondents to both questions: 1034
（2）Summary of the Survey Result
Liberal Democratic Party’s share of votes has become top with 33.0 %, followed byJapanese Communist Party (JCP) with 20.2 %, Democratic Party of Japan with 12.8 %,and “Unified Opposition-Party Candidate involved with JCP” with 10.6 %. Thesepercentages are based on all data including non-party vote choices such as “Have no idea”.

144.1 % of those who voted for LDP disagreed with the single-seat system, whereas 34.6 %of these voters agreed with the system. 68.0 % of those who voted for DPJ disagreed withthe system, whereas 14.1 % of these voters agreed with the system. Within overall voters,
63.5 % disagreed with the system, whereas 20.5 % agreed with the system. These
percentages are based on the data from 1034 Respondents to both questions.
（3）Nature of the Survey
The question about the party preference did not designate the constituency category, sothe survey seems to be a kind of asking an intermediate between the party to support andthe party to vote. The numbers of votes in the survey therefore seem to have an implicationof votes for the proportional-representation constituency rather than those for thesingle-seat constituency. As a result, except for the “Unified Opposition-Party Candidate
involved with Japanese Communist Party (Unified Opposition Candidate, UOC)”, weregarded the numbers of votes and their corrected numbers in the survey as those for the
proportional-representation constituency.
Street poll is likely to be able to reflect the consciousness of young people than the survey
using fixed telephone.
This survey is unique in the aspect of asking preference for parties as vote choice, together
with opinion about the single seat system and would be most relevant in recent politicallandscape jeopardizing constitutionalism through the present election system that shouldintrinsically ensure popular sovereignty as the foundation of constitutionalism.
(4) Correction of the numbers of votes polled (Tokyo, Proportional-RepresentationConstituency)
We corrected the numbers of votes in three manners:a) Komeito: The votes of 36 for Komeito are apparently lower than reality, so we
corrected their votes so that their share of the corrected votes is equal to the real shareof the proportional-representation constituency for Tokyo district in the 2014 House ofRepresentatives election. The votes of the other parties are not changed.
b) Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Komeito: We corrected the respective votes ofLDP and Komeito in the same manner as above.
2c) LDP, Komeito, Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), Japan Innovation Party (JIP) andInitiatives from Osaka (IFO, Osaka Ishin): We corrected the respective votes of LDP
and Komeito in the same manner as above, and the respective votes of DPJ, JIP and
IFO in the manner of correction coefficient = (corrected votes of LDP ÷ polled votes ofLDP) = (corrected respective votes of DPJ, JIP or IFO ÷ polled respective votes of DPJ,JIP or IFO).
The share of corrected votes of 33.2 % for LDP, which is derived from the correction casea), is already almost equal to the actual values, 33.1 % of the overall districts and 32.1 % ofTokyo district for the proportional-representation constituency in 2014 election (see Table2), and the correction coefficient is 0.9 in the correction case of c). There is therefore no
significant difference between the polled and corrected values except Komeito in any
correction case.
（5）Simulation 1 (Table 4) : Tokyo, Single-Seat Constituency - Estimating the shareof votes of “Unified Opposition-Party Candidate involved with Japanese Communist
Party (JCP) (Unified Opposition Candidate, UOC)” and “LDP Candidate who gains
pro Opposition-Party voters who disfavor the Unified Opposition Candidate”(Inflated LDP Candidate)
We set the vote choice of “Unified Opposition-Party Candidate involved with JapaneseCommunist Party (JCP) (Unified Opposition Candidate, UOC)”. We regarded a certain
portion of the polled votes of 5 opposition parties (DPJ, JCP, SDP, JIP and People’s LifeParty) as votes in the next single-seat election in Tokyo and allocated the corrected sharesof votes of these 5 parties to the share of votes of the Unified Opposition Candidate and thereal share of votes of LDP for Tokyo district in 2014 election (45.1 %).
According to the result of poll published in the October 10, 2015 issue of The Mainichi
Newspapers, 60 % of voters who favor DPJ and 90 % of voters who favor JCP agree withthe opinion that “Opposition parties including JCP should cooperate in the election”. We
therefore adopted the allocation rates of 6:4 for DPJ and JIP, and 9:1for JCP, SDP andPeople’s Life Party.
As a result, the total share of votes of the Unified Opposition Candidate consists of theoriginal share of votes of the Unified Opposition Candidate, 60 % of corrected shares ofDPJ and JIP, and 90 % of corrected shares of JCP, SDP and People’s Life Party, and the3

total share of votes of the Inflated LDP Candidate consists of the real share of votes of LDP
for Tokyo district in 2014 election (45.1 %), 40 % of corrected shares of DPJ and JIP, and10 % of corrected shares of JCP, SDP and People’s Life Party.
Although “Share of Votes of LDP” ÷ “Share of Votes of DPJ” for Tokyo district in 2014
election is 2.0, “Share of Votes of Inflated LDP Candidate” ÷ “Share of Votes of Unified
Opposition Candidate” estimated through the survey is 1.3 in all of the correction cases, oris 1.4 or 1.5 even when the Inflated LDP Candidate gains the votes of Osaka Ishin.
（6）Simulation 2 (Table 5) : Nationwide, Single-Seat Constituency - Estimating thenationwide shares of votes of the proportional-representation constituency from thecorrected shares for Tokyo district and then Estimating “Inflated LDP Candidate” ÷“Unified Opposition Candidate” for the overall districts like Section 4
As for JCP, People’s Life Party and The Party for Japanese Kokoro (former “The Party forFuture Generations”), their nationwide shares of votes for the proportional-representation
constituency are lower than those of Tokyo, whereas the other parties are in an oppositeway. The nationwide shares can be estimated by combining the above corrected shares ofTokyo and the results of 2014 election. As for New Renaissance Party and The Assemblyto Energize Japan, we substituted the corrected shares of Tokyo for the estimatednationwide shares.
We employed two ways to estimate the nationwide shares from Tokyo shares. The one wasfollowed by 1) the nationwide shares of JCP, People’s Life Party and The Party forJapanese Kokoro were estimated by multiplying respective corrected shares of Tokyo by
respective “nationwide shares ÷ Tokyo shares” of 2014 election, and then 2) “Tokyo shares- estimated nationwide shares” of these 3 parties were allocated to the remaining parties in
the proportions of respective “nationwide shares - Tokyo shares” of 2014 election. The
other one was to just multiply respective corrected shares of Tokyo by respective“nationwide shares ÷ Tokyo shares” of 2014 election.
Although “Share of Votes of LDP” ÷ “Share of Votes of DPJ” for the overall districts in 2014
election is 2.1, “Share of Votes of Inflated LDP Candidate” ÷ “Share of Votes of Unified
Opposition Candidate” estimated through the survey is 1.6 or 1.7 in any of the correction
cases, or is 1.8 or 1.9 when the Inflated LDP Candidate gains the votes of Osaka Ishin.

4

（7）Analysis and Recommendation
It is not surprising that JCP has become the leading opposition party because JCP’s shareof votes of the proportional-representative constituency for Tokyo district in 2014 election
was already almost same with DPJ.
Even when the severe condition above is applied to the opposite parties, and given thatsome of the pro opposition-party voters disfavor the Unified Opposition Candidate andswitch into LDP, UPC would have merit, compared to the case when the opposition parties
field their own candidates.
Considering that those who voted for LDP and DPJ in the survey are more likely to oppose
the single-seat constituency system, which is advantageous to LDP or DPJ, than to agreewith the system, and that more than half of the overall respondents are against it, all parties
should urgently rethink the system.

5Table 1

All data and calculation process can be found in Excel file：

Survey Result

http://kaze.fm/documents/Street_Poll_Report_20160222.xlsx

Respondents to the question about the party to vote for :1090
Respondents to the question about the single-seat system :1060
Respondents to both questions :1034
Share 2 is based on the data excluding “others” and below.

Vote Choice

Votes / Share
Agree with

Disagree with

Have no idea withsingle-seatsingle-seatsingle-seatsystemsystem

Votes

Share 1

Share 2 system

Liberal Democratic

360

33.0

36.5

120 / 34.6

153 / 44.1

74 / 21.3

Democratic

140

12.8

14.2

18 / 14.1

87 / 68.0

23 / 18.0

Japan Innovation

60.6

0.6

1 / 16.7

3 / 50.0

2 / 33.3

Osaka Ishin

66

6.1

6.7

20 / 31.3

32 / 50.0

12 / 18.8

Komeito

36

3.3

3.6

10 / 30.3

14 / 42.4

9 / 27.3

220

20.2

22.3

14 / 6.7

184 / 88.5

10 / 4.8

JCP

115

10.6

11.7

4 / 3.6

100 / 90.1

7 / 6.3

Social Democratic

151.4

1.5

1 / 6.7

13 / 86.7

1 / 6.7

People’s Life Party

201.8

2.0

7 / 36.8

10 / 52.6

2 / 10.5

Energize Japan

20.2

0.2

1 / 50.0

1 / 50.0

0 / 0.0

New Renaissance Party

00.0

0.0

0 / 0.0

0 / 0.0

0 / 0.0

Japanese Kokoro

70.6

0.7

3 / 50.0

2 / 33.3

1 / 16.7

Others

222.0

6 / 28.6

13 / 61.9

2 / 9.5

Have no idea

736.7

7 / 10.6

37 / 56.1

22 / 33.3

Have no party to vote for60.6

0/0

6 / 1000/0Do not vote

10.1

0/0

1 / 1000/0

Independent candidate

10.1

0/0

1 / 1000/0

1090

100

20.5

63.5

16.0

Japanese Communist
Party (JCP)
Unified Opposition-Party
Candidate involved withTotal

1006

Table 2
Shares of votes for overall proportional-representative constituencies in 2014 election
Nationwide

Tokyo

Liberal Democratic

33.1

32.1

Democratic

18.3

16.3

Japan Innovation

15.7

14.2

Komeito

13.7

12.1

Japanese Communist Party

11.4

15.4

Social Democratic

2.5

2.3

People’s Life Party

1.9

2.7

Japanese Kokoro

2.7

4.4

Other Parties

0.70.6

Total

100

100

Table 3
Ratios of votes for single-seat constituencies in 2014 election
Nationwide

Tokyo

Liberal Democratic

25,461,449

2,561,263

Democratic

11,916,849

1,304,239

Liberal Democratic ÷ Democratic

2.1

2.0

7

Table 4
Simulation 1 of the Next Election in Correction Case a) （Tokyo, Single-Seat Constituency）
45.1 is the real share of votes of Liberal Democratic for Tokyo district in 2014 election.
PolledCorrected

UnifiedInflated

Inflated

PolledShare ofCorrected Share ofOpposition LDP

LDP

Votes

Votes 2

Votes

Candidate

Candidate 2

Votes

Liberal Democratic

360

36.5

360

33.2

Democratic

14014.2

14012.9

Japan Innovation

60.6

60.6

Osaka Ishin

66

6.766

6.1

Komeito

363.6

132

12.2

Party (JCP)

220

22.3

220

20.3

18.3

Unified Opposition
Candidate involved
with JCP

115

11.7

115

10.6

10.6

Social Democratic

15

1.5

15

1.4

People’s Life Party

20

2.020

1.8

Energize Japan

20.2

20.2

New Renaissance
Party

00.0

00.0

Japanese Kokoro

70.7

70.6

987

100

1083

100

Candidate 1
45.1

45.1

7.8

5.2

5.2

0.3

0.2

0.2
6.1

Japanese CommunistTotal
Inflated LDP ÷ UOC

82.0

2.0

1.2

0.1

0.1

1.7

0.2

0.2

39.9

52.8

58.9

1.3

1.5

Table 5
Simulation 2 of the Next Election in Correction Case a) （Nationwide, Single-Seat Constituency）
48.1 is the real share of votes of Liberal Democratic for the overall districts in 2014 election.
UnifiedTokyo

InflatedNationwide Nationwide Opposition LDP

UnifiedInflated

Opposition LDPCorrected EstimatedEstimated

Candidate

Candidate Candidate

Candidate

ShareShare 2112

Share 1

Liberal2
48.1

48.1

Democratic

33.2

34.7

34.3

Democratic12.9

15.7

14.5

9.4

6.3

8.7

5.8

Innovation

0.6

0.7

0.6

0.4

0.3

0.4

0.2

Osaka Ishin

6.1

8.1

6.8

Komeito

12.2

14.4

13.8

Party

20.3

15.0

15.0

13.5

1.5

13.5

1.5

UOC

10.6

7.9

7.9

7.9

Democratic

1.4

1.7

1.5

1.5

0.2

1.4

0.2

People’s Life
Party

1.8

1.3

1.3

1.2

0.1

1.2

0.1

Energize
Japan

0.2

0.2

0.2

New
Renaissance

0.0

0.0

0.0

Japanese
Kokoro

0.6

0.4

0.4

Total

100

10096

33.9

56.5

33.055.9

JapanJapaneseCommunist

7.9

SocialInflated LDP ÷UOC

1.7

1.7

Osaka Ishin

8.1

6.8

Total share

33.9(Inflated LDP + Osaka Ishin) ÷ UOC

64.5
1.9

933.0

62.7
1.9