Over 50 percent of Japanese say they will vote for ruling party: survey

AP Worldstream
09-03-2005
Dateline: TOKYO
About half of Japanese voters say they plan to vote for the country's ruling party in parliamentary elections this month, which would give Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi a wide lead over his main rival, a newspaper poll showed Saturday.

The poll by the nationwide Nihon Keizai economic newspaper, however, showed support for Koizumi's plan to privatize the nation's postal system was slipping ahead of the Sept. 11 ballot for the 480-seat lower house.

The poll, conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 2, showed 54 percent of respondents _ up 2 percentage points from a poll the previous week _ said they would vote for ruling Liberal Democratic Party candidates for the 300 seats in which voters cast ballots for individual candidates, compared to 33 percent who said they supported the largest opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan.

For the 180 proportional representation seats, in which voters cast ballots for parties rather than candidates, 53 percent of respondents said they plan to vote for the LDP, followed by 30 percent who favored the Democrats, the poll said.

But support for Koizumi's postal reforms slipped from 54 percent to 50 percent.

The LDP has kept a comfortable lead over the DPJ in recent polls since the nation's upper house rejected Koizumi's plan to privatize Japan's massive postal and savings system. Koizumi dissolved the lower house on Aug. 8 and called elections.

In a separate survey published Saturday by the Yomiuri newspaper, nearly 40 percent of respondents supported the LDP for both individual and proportional seats, beating the Democrats, who were supported by about 20 percent.

However, the Yomiuri poll found that support for the Democrats was rising, leading to a possible closer contest.

The Nihon Keizai survey, conducted by Internet, received valid responses from 792 people. The Yomiuri poll was conducted by phone Aug. 31 to Sept. 2, with 1,052 people responding. Neither survey provided a margin of error.

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