House of Councillors elections were held in Japan on 7 July 1974, electing half the seats in the House. The Liberal Democratic Party won the most seats. This election has been marked by polar opposite predictions by political commentators, some claiming that the LDP would see diasterous results following severe price inflation and the 1973 oil crisis, although as the election approached, others confidently believed the LDP would see marked success following shifts in forecasts. The results ended up somewhere in between, with the LDP falling down to 126 seats, exactly half barely holding onto a thin majority by enlisting the help of two LDP-aligned independents. The biggest winner among the opposition was the Japanese Communist Party, the only major party to see an increase in the popular v