2025 POLLS: Opposition Fights Intensifying in Multi-Seat Constituencies

   Tokyo, July 14 (Jiji Press)--Opposition parties are stepping up fights in 13 multi-seat constituencies ahead of Sunday's Upper House election in Japan.
   "If our party gets bigger, Japan will change," Kazuya Shimba, secretary-general of the Democratic Party for the People, shouted in a stump speech in the three-seat Chiba constituency, where two seats have been held by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the remainder by the leading opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.
   The DPFP failed to win in any multi-seat constituency in the previous Upper House election in 2022, held two years after the party's foundation. But this time, the party, which caught momentum in April's Tokyo metropolitan assembly election, newly fielded candidates in the Kyoto and Hyogo districts and is boosting campaigns in the Hokkaido and Kanagawa districts.
   In the two-seat Kyoto constituency, one of the fiercest battle fields, the Japanese Communist Party is trying hard to defend a seat it won in the 2019 contest while Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Innovation Party) is aggressively campaigning on top of the CDP and the DPFP, with its co-head Seiji Maehara delivering street speeches on a number of occasions.
   Nippon Ishin, which has a strong voter base in the Kansai region, western Japan, is also determined to retain two seats in the Osaka constituency and one in the Hyogo district in the region. In Osaka, in particular, the party has never lost an Upper House election. To defend the Hyogo seat, its Secretary-General Ryohei Iwatani visited Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, to call for support.

(2025/07/14-17:29)