1996 Japanese general election

1996 Japanese general election

← 1993 20 October 1996 2000 →
All 500 seats in the House of Representatives 251 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	59.65% (7.61pp)
Party Leader % Seats +/– Liberal Democratic Ryutaro Hashimoto 32.76 239 +16 New Frontier Ichirō Ozawa 28.04 156 0 Democratic Naoto Kan 16.10 52 New Communist Tetsuzo Fuwa 13.08 26 +11 Social Democratic Takako Doi 6.38 15 −55 New Party Sakigake Shoichi Ide [ja] 1.05 2 −11 Democratic Reform Teiko Sasano [ja] 0.03 1 New Independents – – 9 −21 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Districts and PR districts, shaded according to winners' vote strength. Prime Minister before Prime Minister after Ryutaro Hashimoto Liberal Democratic Ryutaro Hashimoto Liberal Democratic

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General elections were held in Japan on 20 October 1996. A coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party, New Party Sakigake and the Social Democratic Party, led by incumbent Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto of the LDP won the most seats.

These were the first elections after the 1994 electoral reform. 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.