Kagoshima at-large district is a constituency in the House of Councillors of Japan, the upper house of the Diet of Japan (national legislature). It currently elects two members to the House of Councillors, one per election. It has, historically, similar to other 2-seat, rural prefectures, been an LDP stronghold. The last opposition member elected was before the House of Councilor seat reform, when the JSP successfully elected a candidate in 1995. The closest any party has come to defeating the LDP in the district since was 2007, when Ino Minayoshi lost by only three thousand votes. However, LDP candidates in the district have typically been kept below 50%, mainly due to LDP-infighting; Shuji Maeda took 15% of the vote in the district in 2019, which kept Otsuji below 50%, and in 2022, Ayumi Saigo took a similar amount of the vote, leading to Nomura receiving just under 50% again.
Outline
The constituency represents the entire population of Kagoshima Prefecture and has 1,369,874 registered voters as of September 2015.[2]
As of 2021, the current representatives are:
Hidehisa Otsuji, first elected in 1989. Up for election in 2025. Member of the Liberal Democratic Party.[3]
Tetsuro Nomura, first elected in 2004. Up for election in 2022. Member of the Liberal Democratic Party.[4]
Elected members
People in this district elected the following members of the House of Councillors.[5][6]
^"総務省｜令和4年9月1日現在選挙人名簿及び在外選挙人名簿登録者数" [Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications - Number of registered voters as of 1 September 2022] (in Japanese). Retrieved 2023-01-04.
^"平成２７年９月２日現在選挙人名簿及び在外選挙人名簿登録者数" [Number of resident and non-resident enrolled voters as of 2 September 2015] (in Japanese). 2 September 2015. Retrieved 19 April 2016.
