Nikkei drops despite Abe triumph in snap election

Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic party has swept to victory again in the snap Japanese election held over the weekend.

The Liberal Democratic Party won a convincing 290 seats out of 475 available in the powerful lower house of the Japanese parliament. Abe called the election after arguing he needed a clear mandate to push back a planned sales tax hike and described the poll as a referendum on his economic policies, dubbed Abenomics. The sales tax was due to rise from 8% to 10% next October after rising from 5% in April. The Nikkei fell 1.7% to 17,099 in response in Abe's victory, however, as an underwhelming quarterly business survey hit sentiment. Japan has seen a difficult year economically, f...