3. Reasons Behind the LDP's Loss in the 2024 Election

The chapter examines the historic defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the 2024 House of Representatives election, focusing on the Unification Church scandal and the Uragane (Slush Fund) scandal as key factors. It explores the LDP's initial attempts to ignore these scandals and the subsequent ineffective countermeasures that failed to regain public trust. The analysis includes the party's organizational changes, such as the dissolution of factions and the impact on the leadership selection process. A simple regression analysis is presented to show the negative association between candidates' ties to the Unification Church and under-reported kickbacks with their electoral performance. The chapter concludes that the LDP's inability to thoroughly investigate and address these scandals led to its significant loss in the election, despite the support from its coalition partner, the Kōmeitō.