Akitian general election, 2015

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Akitian general election, 2015 180 seats in the State Committee
		First Party	Second Party	Third Party
Leader		Toru Fujiwara	Keisuke Abe	Saito Sokichi
Party		Liberal Democratic	Nationalist	Democratic
Leader since		2005	2010	1996
Leader's seat		Prime Minister	Kayama-3rd	not contesting (Mayor of Magawa)
Seats before		91	36	32
Seats after		98	32	31
Seat change		+7	-4	-1
		Fourth Party	Fifth Party
Leader		Taro Watanabe	Takeo Ozawa
Party		Reform	Liberal
Leader since		2001	1988
Leader's seat		PR	PR
Seats before		11	5
Seats after		12	3
Seat change		+1	-2

The 23rd Akitian general elections (第23回国家委員会委員選挙) will be held on January 14th, 2015. Voting will take place in all constituencies of Akitsu in order to elect members of the State Committee. Simultaneously, elections for Prime Minister took place. These are the 23rd elections to take place in Akitsu since 1900.

These elections are said to be some of the most important elections in Akitian history since electoral reform in 1964, with the main issue at hand being foreign policy. The Liberal Democratic Party ran a campaign based on an agenda of bringing Akitsu out of isolation, while the Nationalist Party ran on a semi-isolationist platform. Akitian political commentators have called this election the "final battle over isolationism", and it is expecting to be the deciding factor in whether or not Akitsu ends it's isolation.

Background

Since electoral reform in 1964, Akitsu had been dominated by a two-parties, the Nationalist Party and Democratic Party. In 1960 a group of politicians from the Democratic Party and independent politicians who felt that their current policy of political isolationism would hurt Akitsu in the long run banded together to form the Liberal Democratic Party. Initially this was a centrist party, but as their political platform developed and solidified they moved towards the political left, and by the 1980's they had become a centre-left party.

At first, the Liberal Democratic Party did well in elections. They didn't get anywhere near the number of votes that the Nationalist and Democratic parties got, but they got enough votes to have some seats in the State Committee. The dynamic started to change in 1990. In the 1990 general election, Akitian media for the first time seriously focused on the platform the Liberal Democratic Party ran. At first, most political commentators didn't expect the Liberal Democratic Party to win much more votes than they already had, believing their anti-isolationist platform to be at odds with the average Akitian political views.

However, in the 1990 general election the Liberal Democratic Party gained seats in the State Committee for the first time in 20 years (previously their seats remained the same). Following the 1995 general elections the Liberal Democratic Party doubled their seats, and changed the landscape to where no single party had a majority. All these gains were within Akitsu's proportional representation block, but at this time political commentators started taking the Liberal Democratic Party as a more serious contender in the Akitian political system. In the 2000 general election, the Liberal Democratic Party surpassed the Democratic Party as the main opposition party. Following this, the Democratic Party largely withdrew from foreign policy debates, focusing more on the economy in order to preserve the seats they held.

Since 2000, the Liberal Democratic Party has engaged in regular debates with the Nationalist Party regarding foreign policy. In subsequent elections the Liberal Democratic Party continued to make gains, until in 2010 they for the first time won a majority in the Akitian government. In 2010 the first Liberal Democratic Party member was elected into the office of Prime Minister. Still, this majority was literally by only one seat, and thus the debate continued, with many political commentators predicting that the 2015 elections will be the "final showdown" between the Liberal Democratic Party and Nationalist Party over foreign policy.

Results

The Liberal Democratic Party made the largest gains, winning 98 seats in the State Committee, up from 91 the previous election. The Nationalist Party suffered the largest losses, winning only 31 seats, down from 36 in the previous election. All other parties suffered minor losses, with the notable exception of the Reform Party, which won 12 seats, up from 11 the last election.