Coalition candidate Masanori Tanimoto, 48, won by less than 10,000 votes in Sunday's vote for a new governor for the Ishikawa prefecture.
With 99 percent of the votes counted, Tanimoto, a former deputy governor, won 283,993 votes as against 275,863 for the Liberal Democratic Party candidate Hiroshi Ishikawa and 47,624 for a Communist Party candidate, the Ishikawa election commission said.
The vote was seen as a key pointer to whether Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa's eight-group coalition can resist electoral attacks by the LDP, ousted by Hosokawa after 38 years in power.
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