Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party lost both of the Lower House by-elections held on Sunday in the Okinawa No. 3 and Osaka No. 12 electoral districts. While the outcomes of these by-elections may have reflected the particular situation in each constituency — the dispute in Okinawa over the construction of a replacement airfield for the U.S. Marine's Air Station Futenma and the strength of Nippon Ishin no Kai in its home turf of Osaka — the government and the ruling coalition parties should still take seriously the first LDP losses in a Diet by-election since Abe returned to the government in 2012 (with the exception of a 2016 race in Kyoto, in which the LDP was unable to field its own candidate).
Along with the nationwide series of local elections, the by-elections have been closely watched as a barometer of voter sentiment ahead of the triennial Upper House election this summer. The results were a severe verdict by voters on the Abe administration and its policies.
The Okinawa by-election was to fill the vacancy created when Denny Tamaki quite as a Lower House member to successfully run in the gubernatorial election last September. Sunday's victory of a candidate backed by Gov. Tamaki and most opposition parties marks the third time in less than a year that local voters indicated their opposition to the national government's plan to build an airfield in the Henoko district of Nago to take over Futenma's functions — following Tamaki's election as governor and a prefecture-wide referendum in February, in which a majority of Okinawans opposed the land reclamation work taking place off the Henoko coast for the new facility. The government, which is continuing the land reclamation work despite local opposition, needs to reflect on the outcome — and the prospect of building a U.S. military facility that has been clearly rejected by local voters.