Gunma 1st district is a constituency of the House of Representatives

House of Representatives of Japan

The is the lower house of the Diet of Japan. The House of Councillors of Japan is the upper house.The House of Representatives has 480 members, elected for a four-year term. Of these, 180 members are elected from 11 multi-member constituencies by a party-list system of proportional representation,...

 in the Diet of Japan

Diet of Japan

The is Japan's bicameral legislature. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives, and an upper house, called the House of Councillors. Both houses of the Diet are directly elected under a parallel voting system. In addition to passing laws, the Diet is formally...

 (national legislature). It is located in Gunma Prefecture

Gunma Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the northwest corner of the Kantō region on Honshu island. Its capital is Maebashi.- History :The remains of a Paleolithic man were found at Iwajuku, Gunma Prefecture, in the early 20th century and there is a public museum there.Japan was without horses until...

 and consists of the cities of Maebashi

Maebashi, Gunma

is the capital city of Gunma Prefecture, Japan.The city was founded on April 1, 1892, by the samurai Makuba Kawai.On December 5, 2004 the town of Ōgo, and the villages of Kasukawa and Miyagi, all from Seta District, were merged into Maebashi....

, Numata

Numata, Gunma

is a city in Gunma Prefecture, Japan. It is in northern Gunma, bordered by Mt. Akagi and Mt. Hotaka. The kanji for Numata approximately mean "boggy field."...

, parts of Kiryū

Kiryu, Gunma

is a city in Gunma, Japan, near the cities of Ōta and Ashikaga. Incorporated on March 1, 1921, Kiryū is considered both a city and part of the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area, although it is still widely thought of as a rural area...

 and Shibukawa

Shibukawa, Gunma

is a city located in the extreme northwest of the Kantō Plain, in the center of landlocked Gunma, Japan. Encompassing the juncture of the Tone River and Agatsuma River, it is about 120km from Tokyo...

 as well as the Seta and Tone

Tone District, Gunma

is a district located in Gunma .As of May, 2008, the district has an estimated Population of 39,026 and a Density of 29.5 persons/km²...

 districts. As of 2008, 391,062 eligible voters were registered in the district.

Until 2009, Gunma had been a traditional "conservative kingdom" (hoshu-ōkoku), the Japanese equivalent of a "red state" in the United States. Like all single member districts in Gunma, the 1st district had been represented by the Liberal Democratic Party

Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)

The , frequently abbreviated to LDP or , is a centre-right political party in Japan. It is one of the most consistently successful political parties in the democratic world. The LDP ruled almost continuously for nearly 54 years from its founding in 1955 until its defeat in the 2009 election...

 (LDP) since 1997. The LDP used the Costa Rica method (kosutarika-hōshiki) with Koji Omi

Koji Omi

is a Japanese politician, served as Minister of Finance in the cabinet of Shinzō Abe.Omi was born in Numata, Gunma Prefecture and graduated with a degree in Commerce from Hitotsubashi University. He joined the Ministry of International Trade and Industry and later served as consul general of Japan...

 and Genichiro Sata

Genichiro Sata

is a Japanese politician serving in the House of Representatives of Japan as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party. He is presently the Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Administration. He was elected by the first district of the Japanese prefecture of Gunma...

 as alternating candidates for the district. In the election of 2009

Japanese general election, 2009

A general election in Japan was held on August 30, 2009, for all 480 seats of the House of Representatives of Japan, the lower house of the Diet of Japan....

, Omi was the LDP's candidate; incumbent Sata only ran in the Northern Kantō proportional representation block. Both Omi and Sata had represented the pre-reform three-member 1st district of Gunma. The Democratic Party

Democratic Party of Japan

The is a political party in Japan founded in 1998 by the merger of several opposition parties. Its socially liberal platform is generally considered center-left in the Japanese political spectrum...

's candidate in 2009 was Takeshi Miyazaki, a former journalist for the Jōmō Shimbun

Jōmō Shimbun

Jōmō Shimbun is the regional daily newspaper published in Gunma prefecture, Japan.It was established in 1887 and has a circulation of 311,534...Hideo Yokoyama, a novelist, had worked for the Jōmō Shimbun as a journalist for 12 years.-External links:...

.

Election results