Downsian Positions of Parties and Districts from the Numbers of Votes with Examples of Japanese Congressional Elections 1983 - 2004

This paper proposes, under assumptions of sincere voters with some additional conditions, to calculate the positions of parties and districts by “solving” a system of equations whose left hand sides are theoretical predictions and theright hand sides are the actual numbers of votes gained by the parties in the districts. The positions of parties and prefectures are calculated for the seats for the proportional representation in the Japanese congressional elections 1983 – 2004. The result reveals that the competition in these elections was not between the right and the left, but between the urban and the rural