(http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/121216-world-japan-elect-830a.photoblog600.jpg)Yuriko Nakao / ReutersA couple on a bicycle cycles past election campaign posters displayed outside a polling station in Kawasaki, near Tokyo, Sunday. By ReutersTOKYO - Japan's conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) surged back to power in an election on Sunday just three years after a devastating defeat, giving ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a chance to push his hawkish security agenda and radical economic recipe.
Exit polls by television broadcasters showed the LDP winning nearly 300 seats in parliament's powerful 480-member lower house, while its ally, the small New Komeito party, looked set to win about 30 seats.
That would give the two parties the two-thirds majority needed to over-rule parliament's upper house, where no party has a majority and which can block bills, which should help to break a deadlock that has plagued the world's third biggest economy since 2007.
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