General elections were held in Japan on 18 December 1983 to elect the 511 members of the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

. The voter turnout was 67.94%, the lowest it had ever been in post-war history up to that point, and a low which would not be surpassed until ten years later. Contrary to pre-election polls by national daily papers which projected a comfortable majority for the LDP, the latter party lost 34 seats compared to the previous election, falling six seats short of the 256 needed for majority control. As a result, the major conservative party was forced to form a majority coalition government for the first time since 1948. In order to do so, the LDP formed a coalition with the New Liberal Club, a move which JSP leader Masashi Ishibashi called a "betrayal of the electorate." It is likely that the LDP's losses resulted in great part due to running too many candidates and thus falling prey to the

spoiler effect Vote splitting is an electoral effect in which the distribution of votes among multiple similar candidates reduces the chance of winning for any of the similar candidates, and increases the chance of winning for a dissimilar candidate. Vote spl ...

. The biggest winner among the opposition was

Kōmeitō , formerly New Komeito and abbreviated NKP, is a conservative political party in Japan founded by lay members of the Buddhist Japanese new religious movement Soka Gakkai in 1964. Since 2012, it has served in government as the junior coalit ...

, which saw an increase in terms of both seats as well as the popular vote that exceeded all of the other parties. This election also saw considerable

tactical voting Strategic voting, also called tactical voting, sophisticated voting or insincere voting, occurs in voting systems when a voter votes for another candidate or party than their ''sincere preference'' to prevent an undesirable outcome. For example, ...

cooperation between the Japan Socialist Party, Komeito, Socialist Democratic Federation, and Democratic Socialist Party in various combinations, which resulted in varying levels of success for the opposition, but primarily for Komeito's outcome.

Results

By prefecture

References

{{Japanese elections General elections in Japan Japan General election Japanese general election Election and referendum articles with incomplete results