Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe's ruling party set for strong showing in election following assassination

The party of assassinated former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe looks set to increase its majority in the upper house after voters went to the polls on Sunday.

Mr Abe, Japan's longest-serving modern leader, was gunned down on Friday during a speech in support of a local candidate in the western city of Nara, a killing the political establishment condemned as an attack on democracy itself.

The 67-year-old was airlifted to hospital but died of blood loss despite emergency treatment, including massive blood transfusions.

Voter turnout compared to the last upper house election in 2019 appeared to be higher.

Polls closed at 8pm (11am BST) and exit polls predicted a strong showing for the ruling party.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), of which Mr Abe was a senior figure, and its junior partner Komeito were on track to win between 69 and 83 of the 125 seats contested in the upper chamber, according to an exit poll by public broadcaster NHK.

Official results are expected on Monday.Elections for seats in parliament's less powerful upper house are typically seen as a referendum on the sitting government. Opinion polls before the assassination already pointed to a strong showing for the ruling bloc led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, a protege of Mr Abe.

Ahead of the vote, political analysts had predicted that the LDP and Komeito would likely gain from a potential wave of sympathy votes as the nation mourns.

Control of government, which is decided in the lower house, is not at stake in Sunday's election.

Even a strong LDP performance would be overshadowed by the killing of Mr Abe, who as a lawmaker leading the party's largest faction still wielded considerable strength over policy and personnel decisions.

A strong showing at the polls could help Mr Kishida consolidate his rule, giving the former banker from Hiroshima a chance to carry out his goal of boosting military spending. It might allow him to revise Japan's pacifist constitution, a dream Mr Abe never achieved.

"We just lost Mr Abe. I would like the LDP to win many votes so that they can run the country in a stable manner," said Sakae Fujishiro, a 67-year-old pensioner who cast his vote for the ruling party in Tokyo's eastern Edogawa ward.

Katsunori Matsuzawa, 64, voting at a polling station near to where Mr Abe was killed said the assassination might prompt some people on the fence to vote for the LDP. "This hasn't affected the way I voted, but I think it will influence a lot of people," he said, declining to say how he voted.

By contrast, Yuko Takeuchi, 52, a nurse in Tokyo who voted for the Japanese Communist Party, said: "Of course, I am very sorry for his death, but this election must be separated from that."

"In the months ahead, the government is certain to seek to strengthen domestic security," James Brady of the Teneo consultancy said."By undermining the public's general sense of safety and order, [Mr Abe's killing] could also add further momentum to those key Abe causes like defence build-up and constitutional revision."

Most voters favour greater military strength, opinion polls show.

Even though he was out of office, Mr Abe was still highly influential in the LDP and headed its largest faction, but his ultra-nationalist views made him a divisive figure to many.

His death raises the spectre of a power vacuum and potential turmoil within the party, analysts said.

"Former prime minister Abe, who came to support me, was shot in an act of terrorism in the midst of our election campaign," LDP candidate Kei Sato said after NHK projected he would win his seat in Nara prefecture. Mr Abe was campaigning for Mr Sato when he was shot.

"But we continued our campaign in the belief that we must not cave into terrorism or fear it - we must overcome it," he said.

Tributes have been paid to the former Japanese PM, Shinzo Abe, who died after he was shot during a campaign speech, as Asia Correspondent Debi Edward reports

The small, populist Japan Innovation Party, which gained seats in a general election last year, could siphon off votes from the LDP. But since the party also backs constitutional revision, any advances it makes would likely bolster the LDP's goals.

Following the shooting, police arrested the suspected attacker, a former member of Japan's navy, at the scene on suspicion of murder.

The attacker, identified as 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, told investigators he plotted the shooting because he believed rumours that Mr Abe was connected to an organisation that he resents, according to police.

Japanese media reported that the man had developed hatred toward a religious group his mother was devoted to. The reports did not specify the group.

Nara police said they had seized a motorcycle and a vehicle belonging to Yamagami.

From the vehicle, police retrieved trays wrapped in aluminium foil that the suspect said he had used for drying gunpowder, and wooden boards with holes that he said he had used for test-firing his homemade weapon, police said.

The unemployed 41-year-old told police he spent months planning the attack, accusing the former prime minister of links to a religious cult that he blames for his mother's financial ruin, according to Japanese media. 

A black hearse carrying Mr Abe's body and accompanied by his wife, Akie, arrived at his home in Tokyo's upscale residential area of Shibuya on Saturday, where many mourners waited and lowered their heads as the vehicle passed.

His assassination raised questions over whether security for the former prime minister was adequate.

Police on Saturday said autopsy results showed that a bullet that entered Abe's upper left arm damaged arteries beneath both collar bones, causing massive bleeding.

Some observers who watched videos of the assassination on social media and television noted a lack of attention in the open space behind Mr Abe as he spoke.

A former Kyoto prefectural police investigator, Fumikazu Higuchi, said the footage suggested security was sparse at the event and insufficient for a former prime minister.

“It is necessary to investigate why security allowed Yamagami [the suspect who admitted to the killing] to freely move and go behind Mr Abe,” Higuchi told a Nippon TV talk show.

Mr Abe was fighting for his life as he was airlifted to hospital earlier on Friday

Experts also said Mr Abe was more vulnerable standing on the ground level, instead of atop a campaign vehicle, which reportedly could not be arranged because his visit to Nara was hastily planned the day before.

In videos circulating on social media, Yamagami, can be seen with the homemade gun hanging from his shoulder, standing only a few metres behind Mr Abe across a busy street, and continuously glancing around.

A few minutes after Mr Abe stood at the podium and started his speech – as a local party candidate and their supporters stood and waved to the crowd – Yamagami can be seen firing the first shot, which issued a cloud of smoke, but the projectile apparently missed Abe.

As Mr Abe turned to see where the noise came from, a second shot went off.

That shot apparently hit Abe's left arm, missing a bulletproof briefcase raised by a security guard who stood behind the former leader.

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Mr Abe fell to the ground, with his left arm tucked in as if to cover his chest.

Campaign organisers shouted through loudspeakers asking for medical experts to provide first-aid to Mr Abe, whose heart and breathing had stopped by the time he was airlifted to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

According to the Asahi newspaper, Yamagami was a contract worker at a warehouse in Kyoto where he was a forklift operator and known as a quiet person who did not mingle with his colleagues.

A next-door neighbour at his apartment told Asahi he never met Yamagami, though he recalled hearing noises like a saw being used several times late at night over the past month.

Even though he was out of office, Mr Abe was still highly influential in the governing Liberal Democratic Party and headed its largest faction, but his ultra-nationalist views made him a divisive figure to many.

As Mr Kishida campaigned in the final hours before the election, he had an increased police presence around him and a metal detection scanner was installed at the venue, an unusual security measure in Japan.