Nagasaki 3rd district (長崎[県第]3区, Nagasaki[-ken dai-]sanku) is a single-member electoral district for the
House of Representatives, the lower house of the
National Diet of
Japan. It is located in the prefecture of
Nagasaki. It covers parts of Nagasaki on the main island of
Kyūshū – the city of
Ōmura and the towns of
Kawatana,
Hasami and
Higashisonogi, Nagasaki in former Higashi-Sonogi ("East
Sonogi") -gun (county or district) – and several of the prefecture's island municipalities: the cities of
Iki,
Tsushima and
Gotō and the town of
Shin-Kamigotō in Minami-Matsuura/"South
Matsuura" district. As of September 2011, 211,289 eligible voters were registered in Nagasaki 3rd district, giving it the second highest vote weight in the country.[1]
Before the electoral reform of 1994, the area had formed part of the four-member
Nagasaki 2nd district. Two of the last representatives from the pre-reform 2nd district,
Kazuo Torashima (LDP) and
Masahiko Yamada (
JRP), contested the new single-member 4th district in 1996. Torashima won, he was appointed defence minister in the 2nd Mori Cabinet in 2000. In the 2003 election, he retired and was succeeded by
Yaichi Tanigawa. In the landslide election of 2009, Yamada won the district for the first time.