Aso wins!

Aso Taro is the new president of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). As expected, he won in a landslide, receiving roughly two-thirds of all votes (351 of 527 votes).

He received 217 of 386 parliamentary votes to 64 for Yosano Kaoru, 46 for Koike Yuriko, 36 for Ishihara Nobuteru, and 21 for Ishiba Shigeru.

After rejecting him in 2007 and 2006 (and 2001, when he finished a distant third), the LDP has decided to entrust its fate at a critical juncture in its history to Mr. Aso, a conservative-populist maverick, grandson of Yoshida Shigeru, Catholic, and onetime Olympian, with a tendency to make embarrassing and insensitive verbal gaffes.

Both the LDP and Mr. Aso (discussed here) may come to regret their embrace.

The prefectural vote

Yomiuri reports that Aso Taro's final tally in the prefectural voting was 134 out of 141 votes.

Ishiba Shigeru received four, Yosano Kaoru received two, Ishihara Nobuteru received one, and Koike Yuriko received zero.

Yomiuri has declared Mr. Aso the next LDP president, although the results of the vote among parliamentary members has not been announced yet.

Aso's big weekend

The LDP's parliamentarians are gathering to vote for the next party president at this very moment, but the outcome is all but assured.

Thirty of forty-seven LDP prefectural chapters voted over the weekend, and those thirty gave all but six of their ninety votes to Mr. Aso.

Koike Yuriko received zero votes. Ishiba Shigeru received all three of his home prefecture's (Tottori) votes, plus one from neighboring Shimane prefecture. Yosano Kaoru and Ishihara Nobuteru received one apiece, from Tokushima and Nara respectively.

There is little doubting Mr. Aso's popularity among the LDP's rank-and-file members. There is no question that the parliamentary party will confirm the choice of party's chapters in this afternoon's voting, awarding Mr. Aso the presidency after the first round of voting.

Of course, Mr. Aso's landslide victory serves only to heighten the tension between the parliamentary party and the party's grassroots. Will the party's rival schools of thought — represented by Mr. Aso's rival candidates — be cowed by Mr. Aso's lopsided victory? Koizumism appears to have little place in the party's grassroots, even in Tokyo, in which Mr. Koizumi won an overwhelming victory in 2005.

Mr. Aso is moving quickly to consolidate his grip on the party. He has already indicated that he will ask Hosoda Hiroyuki, a six-term lower house member from the Machimura faction, to serve as LDP secretary-general. Mr. Hosoda served as Mr. Koizumi's chief cabinet secretary from 2004-2005 (he succeeded Fukuda Yasuo and preceded Abe Shinzo in that post) and had previously served in the Koizumi cabinet as minister without portfolio for technology policy and Okinawa and the Northern Territories policy. He shares Mr. Aso's interest in promoting high technology. His Wikipedia entry also notes that US policymakers are in awe of him: Former US Ambassador Howard Baker, meeting with him to discuss North Korea's nuclear program, thought he was a nuclear engineer; Condoleeza Rice, having negotiated with Mr. Hosoda while he was CCS, said "He's so smart."

One factor in Mr. Hosoda's appointment is undoubtedly his membership in the Machimura faction; Mr. Aso is obviously repaying his debt to Mori Yoshiro for his support of his candidacy. But will Mr. Hosoda be an asset on the campaign trail? One factor in his favor is that he represents the first district of sparsely populated, poor Shimane prefecture. Mr. Hosoda has had considerable electoral success, winning with nearly twice as many votes as his nearest rival in the four elections under the new electoral system. Whether he would be able to use that personal popularity in support of LDP candidates in similar districts remains to be seen.

Mr. Aso's cabinet has yet to take form, although it appears that Mr. Yosano and Mr. Ishiba will both accept Mr. Aso's offer to serve. I imagine that Mr. Aso will do as best as he can to form a unity cabinet. The question is whether his ideological rivals are prepared to commit to an Aso-led "populist" government.

UPDATE: The final vote total from the prefectural chapters is available here.