General Elections, 22 October 2017

Typhoon Lan, 16–23 October 2017  

Typhoon Lan made landfall in Japan the morning of election day 22 October 2017, and caused flooding, landslides, and the death of at least seven people (NASA 2017). Many municipalities experienced record-breaking 24-hour rainfall (Kitamura and Matsubayashi 2021). Ahead of the storm, more than 200,000 people were ordered to evacuate, with a further 2.2. million homes advised to prepare for evacuation (Enjoji et al. 2017).   

Impact on the electoral process   

Then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had called the snap election only the previous month; it had been originally scheduled for 2018 (Beauchamp 2017). Voters in several prefectures were warned that rainfall would be much heavier in the afternoon than in the morning (Kitamura and Matsubayashi 2021). The typhoon delayed voting at one polling station and in some areas in the Wakayama prefecture, polling stations closed hours earlier than scheduled (Xinhua 2017).   

While votes are counted after polling stations close, vote counting in 12 remote island municipalities was delayed to the next day as ferries were cancelled, making it difficult to transport ballot boxes (Mainichi 2021).   

Voter turnout for the snap election in 2017 was 53.68 per cent which was slightly higher than turnout in 2014 which stood at 52.66 per cent (Statista 2025).