LDP Marks Surge in Public Support

In the first poll by news organizations after the Lower House election, in which Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi achieved a sweeping victory, Takaichi Cabinet maintained high popularity which had been shown in the election. Her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) also gained certain approval from the public, while small opposition parties are fragmented with low popularity. It is focused how Takaichi will reflect this advantage to her handlings of her agenda.

In the poll of Asahi Shimbun, approval for Takaichi Cabinet was 63 percent against 24 percent of disapproval. While approval decreased by 4 percentage points from January, just before beginning of campaign for the Lower House election, disapproval slightly increased by 1 percentage point.

 

Other polls showed mostly the same trend. Approval for Takaichi Cabinet was 65 percent with 7 points of increase in the poll of NHK. Disapproval reduced by 6 points to 20 percent. Nikkei Shimbun released a result in which Takaichi Cabinet achieved 69 percent of approval against 26 percent of disapproval. Approval rose by 2 points, while disapproval rate showed no difference from the previous month. The second Takaichi Cabinet starts with approval percentage at 60s and disapproval at 20s.

 

True winner in the February snap election was the LDP. The party headed by Takaichi marked 17 percentage points of surge from the previous month to 41 percent of support in Nikkei poll. Asahi found 6 points of increase in supporting rate for the LDP to 35 percent. NHK counted 39.9 percent of support for the LDP, rising by 4.2 percentage points. As a result of high popularity for the first female prime minister, the LDP showed a significant boost in the polls.

 

New opposition leader, the Centrist Reform Alliance (CRA), received around 8 percent of support in each of three polls. Although the CRA significantly reduced its seats in the Lower House, it kept its status of top opposition party, as other oppositions did not achieve outstanding gain. It is notable that the CRA achieved 18 percent of votes in proportional districts, while LDP got 36 percent. Considering that the LDP gained 6 times or more seats to the CRA in the election, it is fair to say that the CRA still keeps certain share of support.

 

8 percent must be genuinely basic support for the CRA without swing voters. While Japan Innovation Party, coalition partner of the LDP, the Democratic Party for the People and Sanseito did not achieve a major increase in the polls, other small parties sank to 1 or 2 percent. Only a new party called Team Miral showed a small surge. This result indicated a departure of swing voters from opposition parties and went to the LDP. It is a routine trend that new parties with temporary popularity are vulnerable to abrupt shift of independent voters.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

LDP Kickoffs Presidential Election

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)   kicked off  its presidential election campaign on September 22 and five lawmakers officially submitted their candidacy to the party. Having lost majority in both Houses of the Diet under the leadership of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, the presidential election should be about how to regain power through reform of the party. Nevertheless, the candidates do not talk much about the reform, rather focusing on economic policies for the people or maneuvers to attract the opposition parties.   Those five candidates are former Minister on Economic Security Takayuki Kobayashi, former LDP Secretary General Toshimitsu Motegi, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, former Minister on Economic Security Sanae Takaichi and Miniser of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Shinjiro Koizumi.   Kobayashi insists on temporary income tax cut with a fixed rate, which return is bigger for high-income taxpayers than them with low-income. Identifying h...
Read more

Contaminated Soil to Prime Minister’s Residence

Shigeru Ishiba Cabinet discussed how the radioactively contaminated soil in Fukushima prefecture would be treated and decided some of it should be used in Prime Minister’s Official Residence in Tokyo. Although the soil needs to be removed from Fukushima with legal requirement, the government of Japan has not found anywhere it should go. Ishiba administration hopes that the decision will pave the way for any local community to accept the soil.   Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant emitted a huge amount of radiation into the air, which contaminated the land surface around the site, in the severe accident in East Japan Great Earthquake in 2011. The contaminated soil in Fukushima prefecture was stocked in the intermediate stockyard built in the towns of Futaba and Okuma, where the power plant is located. The government promised the people in Fukushima to remove the soil out of Fukushima prefecture within thirty years, when it decided to build the stockyard in 2014.   The total a...
Read more

BOJ Begins to Sell ETF

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) decided to keep its short-term rate at 0.5 percent in its Monetary Policy Meeting on September 19 th . While it had been expected that the bank would not change the policy rate in the meeting, the meeting unanimously agreed on beginning to sell exchange-traded funds (ETF). Although the policy reflected the bank’s determination for normalizing its monetary policy, the Governor of JOB, Kazuo Ueda, predicted that it would take a hundred years to release all the ETF it possesses. While the BOJ started buying ETF, a financial product which is equivalent to investment trust, in 2010, the bank abruptly increased its quantity of purchase in 2013, under the leadership of then governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, who exchanged an accord with Shinzo Abe administration to cooperate to get rid of deflation and to achieve stable economic growth. The amount of ETF bought by the BOJ has reached 37 trillion yen.   Purchase of ETF by a central bank has been recognized as a prohibited m...
Read more