Gunma 4th district

Gunma 4th district (群馬[県第]4区, Gunma[-ken dai-]yon-ku) is a single-member constituency of the House of Representatives in the Diet of Japan. It is located in Southern Gunma and consists of the city of Fujioka, the Southern part of Takasaki city (without the former municipalities of Gunma, Misato, Haruna and Kurabuchi) as well as Kanna town and Ueno village in Tano county. As of 2009, 292,356 eligible voters were registered in the district.[1]

Before the electoral reform that took effect in 1996, the area was part of the multi-member Gunma 3rd district that elected four Representatives by single non-transferable vote.

Gunma is a "conservative kingdom" (hoshu ōkoku), a stronghold of the Liberal Democratic Party, and the pre-1996 multi-seat 3rd district had been home to the families of LDP presidents and Prime Ministers of Japan Yasuhiro Nakasone, Takeo Fukuda and Keizō Obuchi. The new 4th district's first representative was Fukuda's son Yasuo Fukuda (Machimura faction) who was elected LDP president and Prime Minister himself in 2007 over Tarō Asō (Asō faction). In the LDP's landslide defeat in 2009, Fukuda held his seat over Yukiko Miyake, one of the "Ozawa girls", a group of first-time female candidates handpicked by former Democratic Party president Ichirō Ozawa. Miyake easily won a seat in the Northern Kantō proportional representation block. She followed Ozawa out of the party in 2012 and ran for his Tomorrow Party of Japan in Democratic Party president Yoshihiko Noda's Chiba 4th district where she failed to win even a tenth of the vote, disqualifying her also for potential re-election in the proportional representation bloc.

In Gunma 4th district, Yasuo Fukuda retired in 2012 and was safely succeeded by his son Tatsuo.

List of representatives

Representative	Party		Dates	Notes
Yasuo Fukuda		LDP	1996–2012	Retired in 2012
Tatsuo Fukuda		LDP	2012–	Incumbent

Election results

2012[2]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	LDP (Kōmeitō, NRP)	Tatsuo Fukuda	93,220	55.7
	JRP	Ayaka Miyaharada	42,536	25.4
	DPJ	Kazuya Aoki	17,336	10.4
	JCP	Sadao Hagiwara	14,174	8.5

2009[3]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	LDP (Kōmeitō support)	Yasuo Fukuda	103,852	51.9
	DPJ (PNP support)	Yukiko Miyake (elected by PR)	91,904	45.9
	HRP	Takayuki Morita	4,315	2.2
Turnout			205,416	70.72

2005[4]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	LDP	Yasuo Fukuda	118,517	62.8
	DPJ	Masaki Nakajima	56,364	29.9
	JCP	Etsuo Sakai	13,809	7.3
Turnout			192,933	67.03

2003[5]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	LDP	Yasuo Fukuda	98,903	62.1
	DPJ	Yukio Tomioka	48,427	30.4
	JCP	Shinmei Ogasawara	11,815	7.4
Turnout			164,403	57.5

2000[6]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	LDP	Yasuo Fukuda	94,517	57.7
	DPJ	Masaki Nakajima	49,063	29.9
	JCP	Kiyoko Nomura	20,284	12.4

1996[7]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	LDP	Yasuo Fukuda	73,674	46.0
	NFP	Minoru Komai	45,134	28.2
	DPJ	Masaki Nakajima	24,977	15.6
	JCP	Toshihiko Iizuka	16,425	10.3
Turnout			166,505	60.47

References

1. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC): 平成24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 (in Japanese)
2. 総選挙2012>開票結果　小選挙区　群馬. Yomiuri Shimbun (in Japanese). Retrieved 2013-02-08.
3. 衆議院>第45回衆議院議員選挙>群馬県>群馬4区. ザ･選挙 (in Japanese). VoiceJapan. Retrieved 2011-04-14. External link in |work= (help)
4. 衆議院>第44回衆議院議員選挙>群馬県>群馬4区. ザ･選挙 (in Japanese). VoiceJapan. Retrieved 2011-04-14. External link in |work= (help)
5. 衆議院>第43回衆議院議員選挙>群馬県>群馬4区. ザ･選挙 (in Japanese). VoiceJapan. Retrieved 2011-04-14. External link in |work= (help)
6. 衆議院>第42回衆議院議員選挙>群馬県>群馬4区. ザ･選挙 (in Japanese). VoiceJapan. Retrieved 2011-04-14. External link in |work= (help)
7. 衆議院>第41回衆議院議員選挙>群馬県>群馬4区. ザ･選挙 (in Japanese). VoiceJapan. Retrieved 2011-04-14. External link in |work= (help)