Beyond the headline result—the LDP’s historic single-party super-majority—four additional characteristics of the 2026 campaign and its outcome carry important implications for Japan’s post-election defense policy. First, the LDP won its decisive victory without relying on close electoral cooperation with Kōmeitō, its erstwhile partner in every national election and LDP-led coalition government since 1999. Kōmeitō abandoned the 26-year-old partnership in October 2025, ending a political marriage of convenience that for decades helped the LDP win elections but which also acted as a major constraint on its conservative leaders’ national security reform agenda (Liff and Maeda, 2019). Second, within days of Kōmeitō leaving the coalition, Takaichi replaced it with the conservative, Osaka-based Nippon Ishin no Kai (Ishin)—a party that basically shares the LDP’s goal of major changes to Japan’s defense policy. Third, the abysmal electoral performance of the LDP’s de facto principal HR opposition—the Kōmeitō-Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP)’s hastily assembled Centrist Reform Alliance (CRA) —severely weakened the center-left’s ability to check the LDP. The CRA’s loss of 123 (72-percent) of its pre-election seats is particularly relevant for the present study because the CRA was the only major party whose candidates did not overwhelmingly support efforts to strengthen Japan’s defense capabilities (Asahi, February 8, 2026).