Aso Heads into Election with Rock-Bottom Public Support

Tokyo, July 22 (Jiji Press)--Prime Minister Taro Aso is the least popular Japanese leader to call a general election under the current electoral system, with his public support rating slumping below 20 pct just before he dissolved the all-important House of Representatives for voting on Aug. 30.

Aso's decision on the Lower House breakup finally came on Tuesday,
after he deferred the action many times due to the continuously low public
approval rating for his cabinet.
In 1996, Japan introduced a dual system of single-seat
constituencies and national proportional representation and has kept it
since then.
In the July opinion poll by Jiji Press, the approval rate for Aso's
cabinet fell 7.8 percentage points from June to 16.3 pct, the worst since
the cabinet was launched in September last year. This appeared to reflect
Aso's failure to show leadership in making important decisions, exemplified
by his recent backpedaling on a plan to reshuffle the LDP's executive
roster.
The survey result does not seem to bode well for the long-ruling
Liberal Democratic Party, now headed by Aso. One of his cabinet members,
transport minister Kazuyoshi Kaneko, said it is the worst timing for the
election.
Among previous prime ministers, Ryutaro Hashimoto dissolved the
Lower House in September 1996 and Junichiro Koizumi did so in October 2003
and August 2005 with approval rates of around 40 pct to 50 pct.
The elections that followed all resulted in the LDP's comfortable
victories, including the historic win of 2005.
The story was a little bit different for Yoshiro Mori, who
dissolved the Lower House in June 2000. Although he had enjoyed support from
30.4 pct of voters just before the dissolution, the approval rate dropped to
18.2 pct afterward as Mori, who had a penchant for making verbal gaffes,
remarked that he wished nonaffiliated voters could stay asleep on the
election day.
Still, the LDP was so much more popular than the main opposition
Democratic Party of Japan then that it was able to keep a combined majority
in the Lower House with its coalition partners.
Following the structural reforms initiated by Koizumi, many
organizations that traditionally supported the LDP have backed away from the
party.
In the latest opinion poll, the LDP's support rate stood at 15.1
pct, falling for the first time below the DPJ's, at 18.6 pct.
The outcome of the poll was in line with the LDP's successive
defeats in recent local elections, including its crushing loss in the July
12 Tokyo assembly election.