Hokkaidō 1st district (北海道[第]1区, Hokkaidō-[dai-]ikku) is a single-member constituency of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the national Diet of Japan. It is located in Western Hokkaidō and consists of Sapporo city's Chūō ("Centre"), Minami ("South") and Nishi ("West") wards. As of 2015, 493,140 eligible voters were registered in the district, giving it the lowest electoral weight in Hokkaidō.[1]
Since 2012, the district has been represented by Liberal Democrat Toshimitsu Funahashi, who was able to defeat Democratic incumbent and former Hokkaidō governor Takahiro Yokomichi. Yokomichi is the leader of the ex-Socialist faction within the Democratic Party of Japan and president of the House of Representatives from 2009 to 2012. Before the 1994 House of Representatives electoral reform, Sapporo city had been part of the six-member 1st district that covered Ishikari and Shiribetsu subprefectures. Yokomichi and previously his father Setsuo had represented the pre-reform multi-member 1st district for the Socialists from 1952 until the 1983 gubernatorial election, interrupted by two years after Setsuo Yokomichi's death in 1967. In the 2009 general election, Yokomichi's main challenger was Liberal Democrat Gaku Hasegawa, who lost the race and also failed to win a proportional seat, but went on to become Councillor for Hokkaidō in 2010. In 2005, Muneo Suzuki's regionalist New Party Daichi nominated ski jumper Masahiro Akimoto in the district. In 2000, former Olympic weightlifter and current Hokkaidō assemblyman Nobuyuki Hatta ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for Ichirō Ozawa's Liberal Party. In 2012, Olympic speed skater Hiroyasu Shimizu ran for the district as a member of the New Party Daichi – True Democrats.
14.58
2.48