The Liberal Democratic Party may have unseated Tomin First no Kai (Tokyoites First) as the dominant force in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly in Sunday's poll, but the party has little to celebrate.
Defying initial predictions that the LDP would capture more than 50 seats out of 127, albeit with its junior partner Komeito losing seats, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's LDP and Komeito failed to reach a majority — the former only adding eight more seats to its previous tally of 33, and the latter keeping all of its 23 seats.
Tomin First, for which analysts expected to see a drop in seats from 45 to around 20, performed better than expected, emerging with 31 seats. The Japanese Communist Party grabbed one additional seat for a total of 19, and the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan picked up seven additional seats, bringing it to a total of 15.