Coordinating LDP candidates was made even more difficult because in some districts the koenkai had already formed personal networks that did not come apart or adapt easily, causing the existence of the koenkai in itself to become a hindrance in party efforts to build a network of party branches. In the early 1960s, the LDP attempted to centralize again, announcing a Plan for Organizational Activities (Soshiku Kkatsudō Hoshin), in which party activists were to be educated at party headquarters to learn how to discipline a variety of groups in the local municipalities. This, again, did not work out, and by 1963 the LDP abandoned these efforts and instead started to co-opt the koenkai to serve in place of local branches. Subsequently, koenkai membership rates for the LDP slowly rose, rising from about 8% in 1967 to around 20% in 1976, the latter only exceeded by the Komeito's 24%. On the other hand, while the Socialists relied heavily on unions reinforced by koenkai, their koenkai movement was insignificant compared to the other parties; only 5% of those voting for the JSP in the 1967 general election belonging to koenkai, and even after this figure increased to 13% in the 1976 elections it still lagged behind the koenkai of other parties.
