The Genron NPO released the results of their 9-party Manifesto Evaluation for the 23rd House of Councillors election to be held July 21, 2013. The results, announced today, can be viewed on The Genron NPO website.(Japanese only)

For this election, the parties' campaign pledges had deteriorated dramatically, generating a condition in which citizens cannot make judgments on the various policies. Because there is a high probability that national elections will be held for nearly 3 years after this upcoming House of Councillors election, this election is an exceedingly important opportunity asking for judgments to be made by the public.

In light of such conditions, we at The Genron NPO have conducted two forms of evaluation, a Basic Evaluation and Manifesto Evaluation of each party's campaign pledge in an effort to provide decision-making tools for voters.

■ Basic Evaluation / Almost all parties scored under 1 point out of 5, the LDP scored highest at 2 points

In the Basic Evaluation, rating the extent to which the parties engage in issues faced by the country and its people, the highest score was the LDP's 2 points out of 5. Most other parties' campaign pledges scored 1 point.

Basic Evaluation

■ Results of the Manifesto Evaluation / Out of 100 total points, highest was the LDP's 29 points

All parties scored below passing

The policies in each party's campaign pledge were also evaluated based on 12 policy categories including fiscal, economic, environmental/energy and agricultural policies. The top 3 of the 9 parties were the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) scoring 29 points, the New Komei Party (NKP) scoring 21 points and Your Party (YP) scoring 21 points out of a total of 100 points, displaying an extremely harsh outcome where all parties scored much lower than would typically be considered passing.

Manifesto Evaluation

※To read general comments and detailed evaluation for each item, visit The Genron NPO website. (Japanese Only)

《Why Make Two Evaluations?》

The Genron NPO performed two evaluations, a Basic Evaluation measuring whether the party is seriously engaged in serving the people and a Manifesto Evaluation rating its campaign pledge. These two evaluations were released because, in this upcoming House of Councillors election, the campaign pledges for the various parties have deteriorated greatly, generating a condition in which people cannot decide how to interpret them. Further, while this may depend on future political conditions, there is a high probability that national elections will not be held for another 3 years. Consideration was thus given to the fact that this election is an exceedingly important opportunity to ask for the people's judgments.

《About the Manifesto Evaluation Criteria》

The Genron NPO has been conducting evaluations of party manifestos and the administration's policy implementation since 2004. This House of Councillors election marks our eighth evaluation. The evaluations conducted at this time were carried out based on some evaluation criteria.

The Basic Evaluation assessed whether the party campaign pledges engage with "the people" as well as "the issues." It rated the party in the form of its campaign pledge, based on 6 items including the manifesto format and relationship with pledges made in the general election last year, its selection of issues and proposed path to solving them.

The Manifesto Evaluation made assessments based on The Genron NPO's evaluation criteria in use since 2004. The criteria is composed of a (1) format criteria measuring whether the campaign pledge is clearly defined for voters and enables judgments to be made and (2) substantive criteria evaluating the validity of proposed solutions to issues as well as the systems for their realization and the party's accountability. Each campaign pledge was judged based on 8 items within these two criteria.