Abstract
This article aims at examining causes of the low turnout rate in the elections for the Lower House of the Diet after 1996. The turnout rate fell rapidly between 1990 and 1996 and remained low through 2005. The authors point out that cohort factors may lower the turnout rate and analyze two data sets using the Bayesian age-period-cohort model: one from surveys of the turnout rates in elections for the Lower House of the Diet between 1969 and 2005 by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and the other one from the sample surveys by the Association for Promoting Fair Elections. In the analyses, Japanese voters born after 1966 are found to have low cohort effects which accounts for the lower turnout rates after 1996.
