When Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called snap elections last month, it was a big gamble. Holding a winter election just four months into her tenure with no real policy record to run on? Staking her sky-high approval ratings – then hovering around 70% – on an untested bet that personal popularity would translate into seats? The conventional wisdom said she was overreaching. The conventional wisdom got torched.
Takaichi walked away from the Feb. 8 vote with a historic landslide, securing a rare two-thirds supermajority in the lower house for her Liberal Democratic Party. The LDP went into the day with 198 seats in the 465-seat chamber and walked out with 316. That's the largest mandate in Japan's postwar history, bigger even than any won by Shinzo Abe, Takaichi's late mentor. The LDP can now override vetoes from the upper house, where it lacks a majority. After cycling through revolving-door prime ministers for years, Japan has elected its most powerful leader since World War II.
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