The Yomiuri Shimbun reported on the 26th that although the popularity of Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae is higher than that of her predecessor, former Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru, the share of respondents who say they will vote for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in the general election scheduled for early next month is not much different from under the Ishiba cabinet.

Yomiuri reported on the 26th that in a telephone survey of 1,034 people conducted from the 23∼25, the approval rating for the cabinet led by Prime Minister Takaichi was 69%, down 4 percentage points from the previous month. Since its launch in October, the Takaichi cabinet has consistently maintained around 60∼70% approval. However, when asked which party they would vote for in the proportional representation ballot, only 36% said the Liberal Democratic Party.

After taking office in October 2024, former Prime Minister Ishiba immediately dissolved the House of Representatives (lower house) and held a general election, which resulted in a crushing defeat for the ruling camp. At that time, approval for the Ishiba cabinet was around 40∼50%, and in a Yomiuri survey conducted just before the October 2024 general election, 39% said they would pick the Liberal Democratic Party in the proportional representation vote.

This survey also found that the lower the age group, the higher the approval of the Takaichi cabinet, yet younger voters were reluctant to support the Liberal Democratic Party in the proportional representation vote. Approval for the Takaichi cabinet was 79% among those aged 18∼39, 75% among those 40∼59, and 58% among those 60 and older. However, the share saying they would vote for the Liberal Democratic Party in the proportional representation ballot was 33% among those 18∼39 and 37% among those 40 and older.

Yomiuri analyzed, “the young demographic and independents that underpin the high approval of the Takaichi cabinet are not moving to the Liberal Democratic Party in terms of voting intention.”

The fact that approval for the Takaichi cabinet is higher than under the former Ishiba administration while the share of voters saying they will vote for the Liberal Democratic Party in the general election next month is similar to October 2024 was also confirmed in a poll conducted by Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) together with TV Tokyo. In this survey, which had 977 participants from the 23∼25 of this month, approval for the Takaichi cabinet was 67%, down 8 percentage points from the previous month.

In this survey, the largest share of respondents, at 40%, chose the Liberal Democratic Party as the party they would vote for in the general election. This figure is the same as in a Nikkei survey conducted just before the October 2024 general election.

In the Nikkei survey as well, the share of younger voters saying they would vote for the Liberal Democratic Party was relatively low: 35% among those 18∼39, 41% among those in their 40∼50s, and 42% among those 60 and older.

Although in some late-month polls the approval for the Takaichi cabinet fell by as much as about 10 percentage points, it remains high at the 50∼60% level. The largest opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, and the third-largest opposition party, Komeito, recently launched the ‘Centrist Reform Alliance’ to counter the hardline conservative Takaichi administration, but in voting-intention surveys there remains a large gap with the Liberal Democratic Party.

In the Yomiuri survey, party support rates were 36% for the Liberal Democratic Party and 9% for the Centrist Reform Alliance, while in the Nikkei survey they were 40% and 13%, respectively. On this, an official of the Centrist Reform Alliance expressed impatience, saying, “(Policies and the like are) not penetrating public sentiment.”