Tokyo, 22 July, /AJMEDIA/
The approval rating for Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s cabinet has edged up by 2.4 percentage points to 24.6 percent, a Kyodo News survey showed Sunday.
The result means the support rate of Kishida’s cabinet has remained below 30 percent nine consecutive times since November last year, amid continued public dissatisfaction with his leadership.
The disapproval rate for Kishida’s cabinet fell to 60.7 percent, 1.7 percentage points down from a previous 62.4 percent in June, according to the nationwide telephone poll conducted over two days from Saturday.
Regarding a question on whether respondents will take a political funds scandal, which has rattled Kishida’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, into consideration when they vote in the next general election, 73.3 percent said they would.
Against the backdrop of the LDP’s unpopularity, 51.2 percent said they hope the number of lower house seats won by the party’s ruling coalition in the next general election will be close to the same as those won by opposition parties.
The poll also showed that 74.2 percent of respondents do not think a 40,000 yen income and residence tax cut the government began in June has helped them make ends meet amid rising costs.
Regarding a recent spate of scandals in the Defense Ministry and the Self-Defense Forces over the mishandling of sensitive information in the latter’s maritime branch, 48. 2 percent said Defense Minister Minoru Kihara should take responsibility by resigning, while 46.1 said doing so would be unnecessary.
The Maritime Self-Defense Force’s top admiral, Ryo Sakai, stepped down Friday last week amid mounting public distrust of the ministry and the SDF in the wake of the scandals.
On a question concerning the government’s decision to temporarily reinstate subsidies to help lower electricity and gas prices from August, 59.5 percent approved of it, while 39.2 did not.
A total of 81.2 percent of respondents said the government needs to tighten regulations concerning gubernatorial election posters after some candidates in Tokyo’s race earlier this month posted sexually explicit images, and sometimes covered large parts of official campaign boards with their adverts.
By political party, the support rate for the LDP stood at 33.1 percent, while that for the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan was at 10.1 percent, with the Japan Innovation Party measuring at 6.6 percent.
Respondents with no affiliation to any particular party accounted for 30.0 percent.
The survey called 498 randomly selected households with eligible voters and 2,701 mobile phone numbers. It yielded responses from 418 household members and 617 mobile users.
Some parts of Ishikawa Prefecture affected by the Noto Peninsula earthquake on New Year’s Day were excluded from the survey.
