Saga 1st district

Saga 1st District
Parliamentary constituency
for the Japanese House of Representatives
Numbered map of Saga Prefecture
single-member districts
PrefectureSaga
Proportional DistrictKyushu
Current constituency
Created1994
SeatsOne
PartyCDP
RepresentativeKazuhiro Haraguchi

Saga 1st district (佐賀県第1区, Saga-ken dai-ikku) is a single-member constituency of the House of Representatives in the national Diet of Japan located in Saga Prefecture.

Kazuhiro Haraguchi initially won the district narrowly for the New Frontier Party (NFP) in 1996 but lost it in 2000 to Takanori Sakai (LDP) who was appointed as Cabinet Office Vice Minister in the 2nd realigned Mori cabinet. In March 2003, Sakai was arrested (and later sentenced to 32 months in prison) for having received illicit corporate donations in violation of the Political Funds Control Law.
Takamaro Fukuoka replaced Sakai as LDP candidate for Saga 1 in the 2003 election and lost to Haraguchi. The "postal privatization" election of 2005 gave the LDP a landslide victory, and Fukuoka beat Haraguchi despite the fact that the DPJ's opposition ally, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), unlike in previous elections did not nominate a candidate in Saga 1st district. In the landslide LDP defeat of 2009, Haraguchi won the district for the third time and became the Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications in the Hatoyama Cabinet.
Haraguchi was defeated by Kazuchika Iwata (LDP), a former second-generation Saga prefectural assemblyman, in 2012 but regained the seat in 2014.

In September 2023 the district had 331,037 eligible voters. In 2012 they were 237,748.

Before the 1994 electoral reform, the area had been part of Saga At-large district where five representatives were elected by single non-transferable vote.