Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) promised to focus spending on households, cut waste and wrest control of policy from the hands of bureacrats, a shift from the business friendly LDP. The Democratic party of Japan is likely to win around 320 seats out of the total 480 seats in the election, which will be conducted on Sunday. Before the parliament was dissolved in July, the party headed by Yukio Hatoyama had 112 seats under his belt.

Aso's Liberal Democratic Party which had 300 seats before the elections, is heading towards a crushing defeat. It is believed that LDP would only manage to win around 100 seats this time. An opposition victory would be considered as one of the greatest historic wins to unseat the Liberal Democrats. Hatoyama would likely be the Prime Minister if his party wins control of the lower house.

Aso's weak leadership and the fragile economy, increasing unemployement, lack of leadership and its support of higher taxes are believed to be the main reasons for the party's downfall. Aso, who is the party's president, has a support rating at less than 20 per cent. Both the Liberal Democratic Party and and the Opposition Party share broadly conservative stances on a lot many major issues, but it is believed that if the Democratic Party comes to power, some of Japan's most established policies would be re-examined. The most important issue would be the country's relationship with Washington, as the party has been accussing the LDP of serving the United States in its military actions, where a harder line had to be drawn in negotiations.

Hatoyama said that US - Japan would continue to be the conrnerstone of Japanese diplomatic policy but Japan must remember its identity as a nation located in Asia. His party has also promised not to raise the consumption tax for four years. Further, measures would be launched to ensure better educaton, child reading support and easing weath disparities by his party. In 2007, the Democratic Party did manage to win the less powerful upper house but it never was able to control the cabinet.

Also there are a few other possible outcomes of the election: It could be a democrat led coalition. In this case, if the Democratic party falls short of a majority, it could still take charge by forming a coalition with two smaller allies. But then it would have to pay heed to the Social Democrats and People'e New party could argue and cause trouble agreeing on policies related to security and dimplomacy.

Another outcome could be that if the democrats fail to win convincingly and the margin on either side is very small, the LDP and Democrats would try to woo small parties to from a coalition. Such an outcome would delay the formation of a new government, although the parliament must meet to elect the Prime Minister within a month. Another major problem could be in implementing the policies.

The most unlikely possibilty could be that the ruling party still stays in power. In this case, the ruling LDP and its junior partners would lose the majority to enact laws that are rejected in the upper house, as the opposition is in majority.