The June 25 Lower House election saw a rise in the number of voters who made up their mind about which candidate and party to back just before the day of the vote, according to surveys conducted by Kyodo News before and after the poll.
The prevalence of such voters, most of whom are not committed to any particular party, was apparently the reason why election forecasts based on opinion polls conducted by various news organizations one week before election day turned out unreliable.
The number of uncommitted voters started rising after the Liberal Democratic Party's decades-long, single-party rule came to an end in 1993, leading to a period of shifting alliances among parties.