Genta Koja breaks record with over 400,000 votes in Okinawa governor race

Okinawa’s election board announced that Genta Koja captured more than 400,000 votes in Sunday’s gubernatorial election, establishing a new prefectural record. The former high was 396,632 votes earned by incumbent Denny Tamaki in 2018. Koja won the majority of votes in all but one village, and overall voter participation increased to 61.57%, a rise of 3.65 percentage points from the 2022 contest.

Of the 717,714 registered voters, 347,171 cast early ballots, representing almost half of the total turnout. Koja ran with the endorsement of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and other conservative factions, while Tamaki, serving his second term, was backed by the All Okinawa group, which opposes the relocation of a U.S. military base on the island. The result signals a shift in local political dynamics amid ongoing debates over the U.S. presence.