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9. Conclusion
Japan’s new electoral system eliminated the necessity of intraparty competition at
the election stage, which many political reformers and scholars hope will make money
less necessary to “buy” votes. In addition, new campaign finance regulations were
adopted to make the flow of money more transparent. However, elections may not have
become any less expensive because candidates appear to be spending considerable sums
to boost their vote shares in the single-member districts. Indeed, this paper uncovered a
positive correlation between campaign spending and votes, which underscores the
continued importance of money in Japan’s SMD tier.
The empirical analysis used in this paper offered support for the expected
correlations between campaign spending and vote shares. For both parties, Hypothesis 1,
which postulated a positive correlation between own spending and vote shares, can be
generally confirmed. In the case of the LDP, it appears that expenditures from the party
branch and koenkai are related to a 1% change in vote share for each increase in spending
of ¥100 ($.94) per elector. This result suggests that LDP candidates may need to spend
significant amounts of funds to have a significant positive effect on their vote shares.
In addition, this paper examined Hypothesis 2 to determine whether campaign
spending from other parties’ rivals was negatively correlated with vote shares. In the case
of the LDP, many of the coefficients for the various types of rival expenditures were
Convention