Japan's right-wing ruling party is set to regain a majority in lower house elections, media projections showed on Sunday in what would be a big victory for ultraconservative Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
Takaichi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) alone is expected to have won between 274 and 328 seats in the 465-member lower house, up from its current 198, national broadcaster NHK reported.
Together with its coalition partner the Japan Innovation Party, known as Ishin, the ruling bloc could secure as many as 366 seats in total.
Winning 310 or more seats would grant the ruling coalition a two-thirds super-majority in the lower house, giving the ruling party the power to revise the country's Constitution.
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"We received backing for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's responsible, proactive fiscal policies and a strengthening of national defence capabilities," LDP secretary general Shunichi Suzuki told Japanese media.
The new Centrist Reform Alliance of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) and the LDP's previous partner Komeito looked to have lost more than two-thirds of its 167 seats.
The anti-immigration Sanseito party was projected to have increased its seats from two to between five and 14, broadcaster NHK said.
Takaichi has injected new life into the LDP, which has governed Japan almost non-stop for decades but which has shed support in recent elections because of unhappiness about rising prices and corruption.
The country's first woman prime minister has sparked an unlikely youth-led craze called "sanakatsu", roughly translated as "Sanae-mania", with the products she uses, such as her handbag and the pink pen she scribbles notes with in parliament, in high demand.
On Thursday, Takaichi received the "total endorsement" of US President Donald Trump.
But Takaichi has not had everything her own way, particularly with regard to worries about her stewardship of the public finances of Asia's number-two economy.
She followed up a $135 billion stimulus package aimed at easing the pain of inflation – a big cause of voter discontent – with a campaign promise to suspend a consumption tax on food.
Japan's debt is more than twice the size of the entire economy, and in recent weeks yields on long-dated bonds have hit record highs, causing jitters worldwide.
Takaichi's nationalist rhetoric has also soured the country's already fraught relationship with Beijing.
Weeks after taking office, Takaichi touched off the biggest dispute with China in more than a decade by publicly outlining how Tokyo might respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
A strong mandate could accelerate her plans to bolster Japan's defence, which Beijing has criticised as an attempt to revive its militaristic past.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)
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