Japan voted Friday afternoon to elect a new president of the Liberal Democratic Party

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party will vote for its 28th president on Friday afternoon (September 27). The new president will be Japan's next prime minister.

Kyodo News reported that as many as nine candidates, the largest number ever, it is estimated that no one can win a majority of the votes in the 27th vote, and the top two candidates will enter the second round of runoff.

Former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, 67, economy and security Minister Sanae Takaichi, 63, and former environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, 43, are favored to advance to the second round.

Nine candidates will compete for 367 parliamentary votes and an equal number of party votes. In the second round of the runoff, the number of parliamentary votes remained at 367, or one member, one vote, while the number of local votes was reduced to 47, or one vote for each prefecture. In other words, 90 per cent of the votes in the showdown are by MPS.