With poll win, Abe reaches endgame of his gamble

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe got a phone call from his British counterpart Theresa May on Oct 23, who congratulated him on his win in the general election. May lost overall majority in the British parliament after taking an extraordinary gamble of calling a snap election in June to take advantage of what she perceived to be a weak opposition. Now, she is running a government with the support of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party.

Abe's political opportunism, on the other hand, has paid off. His ruling coalition won two-thirds of the seats, or super majority, in the lower house of Japan's parliament in the Oct 22 snap election. As a result, Abe could stay in power until autumn 2021 and bid for a third term for the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership race in September 2018.

The LDP won the same number of seats, 284, that it had before Abe dissolved the parliament on Sept 28. But its junior partner, the Komeito, suffered a blow, with its share dropping from 35 to 29. The centrist party's coalition with the center-right LDP, which has been criticized for ramming a series of controversial bills through parliament in the past almost five years, has eroded the Komeito's public support.