Once again, Sanae Takaichi finds herself in a similar position to where she was last year. That being just one voting round shy of becoming Japan’s first ever female prime minister. This time around, the person standing in her way is Shinjiro Koizumi – who himself has the chance to become Japan’s youngest prime minister in the post-war era.
In the first round of voting, Takaichi scored 183 votes and that was the most among all five candidates. However, that is still short of the 295 voting majority needed to win. Koizumi got 164 votes, so it is very much a tight contest between the two.
As for the others, chief Cabinet secretary Hayashi got 134 votes. Meanwhile, former economic security minister Kobayashi got 59 votes and former foreign minister Motegi scored only 49 votes.
Heading into the runoff vote now, the “swing” will come down to who among the two that the other voters will now back after having seen their candidate choice fall out. That was what cost Takaichi her chance last year as well, having won the preliminary round but losing to Ishiba in the runoff. Will we get a repeat of that this time around?
As for the potential impact to markets, I provided some notes to their policy background yesterday here.
