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Summary
Voting continues for the Parliamentary elections in Japan. Japan's opposition Democratic Party looks headed for an election win on Sunday that would oust the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for only the second time in its 54-year history. The Japanese House of Representatives has 480 members, 300 of whom are elected by simple majority vote in single-member districts. The remaining 180 members are elected by proportional representation from a list of candidates selected by the political parties. The term of office for representatives is four years. A total of 1300 candidates will be contesting for the general elections today. Legal age for casting a vote in Japan is 20 years; where as a more than 130,000 voters would be casting their votes. he conservative Liberal Democratic Party, led by Prime Minister Taro Aso, has governed Japan for all but eleven months since 1955. Leading the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, or DPJ, is Yukio Hatoyama, who has been mobbed at street rallies by supporters, the kind of support the opposition has never seen.
