Conservatives win Japan poll: broadcasters

Voters have begun casting ballots in Japan for a general election. Source: AAP

JAPAN'S conservative opposition has swept to victory in polls on Sunday, broadcasters say, in an apparent shift to the right as tensions rise with China and the economy continues to stumble.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) led by the hawkish Shinzo Abe appears set to secure a handsome majority in elections for the powerful lower house of parliament.

Voters appear to have abandoned Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda three years after his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) promised a change from the more than 50 years of almost unbroken LDP rule.

Broadcaster NHK, citing forecasts based on its own exit polls, said the LDP was likely to win 275 to 310 seats in the 480-seat lower house, against 55 to 77 seats to DPJ.

New Komeito, LDP's coalition partner, was likely to win 27 to 35 seats, NHK said.

That could give the conservative coalition a more than two-thirds majority in the powerful lower house, enough to override the upper house, in which no party has overall control.

"The LDP sweeps to victory; Abe administration to start," the online edition of the Nikkei newspaper said in its headline.

Nationalist former Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, whose bid to buy disputed islands provoked a fierce diplomatic showdown with China, was also headed to parliament, NHK said.

Ishihara leads the populist Japan Restoration Party.

Abe, whose brief stint as premier in 2006-7 ended ignominiously, pledged to fix Japan's economy, which has suffered years of deflation, made worse by a soaring currency that has squeezed exporters.

He has also promised to boost spending on infrastructure projects at a time when large parts of the tsunami-ravaged northeast have yet to see significant rebuilding following the March 2011 catastrophe.

The collapse of an ageing highway tunnel that claimed nine lives earlier this month added weight to his campaign, which was criticised by opponents as a return to the LDP's "construction state" of the last century.

Public unease about a worsening security environment - North Korea lobbed a rocket over Japan's southern islands last week and China sent a plane into Japanese airspace - also apparently bolstered support for Abe.

He has promised to strengthen defences and revitalise a security alliance with the United States that is widely thought to have drifted under Noda's party.

Parliament will be called to session as early as December 26th to name Abe as the new prime minister, the Nikkei newspaper said.

"Mr Abe is expected to form his cabinet on the same day," the Nikkei said.

"He will issue his plan to draft an extra budget by the year-end as well as a broad direction for the next fiscal year's budget before closing the extraordinary Diet session on December 28," the Nikkei said.

In an evening that looked set to be a fairly miserable one for Noda, TV Asahi reported at least two of his ministers would lose their seats.

Internal Affairs Minister Shinji Tarutoko and Education Minister Makiko Tanaka appeared to have lost their constituency seats. It is possible that they may win through on the proportional representation part of the ballot.

Noda's fate as leader of the much-diminished DPJ also looked in doubt, reports said, even though he appeared to have retained his seat.

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