As Jun Okumura notes, a poll by Fuji TV's Hodo 2001 program found that Fukuda Yasuo gained nothing from Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Japan last week.The poll recorded that nearly sixty percent of respondents disapprove of Mr. Fukuda's China policy.Beyond public doubts, Mr. Fukuda's action (or inaction) during Mr. Hu's visit have driven …
Continue reading Fear and loathing in the wake of Hu’s visit
Sankei has published the fourth part of its analysis of recent public opinion polls (parts one through three discussed here).The questions dissected here are related to the government's use of its two-thirds majority to pass the gasoline tax and MSDF refueling mission authorization bills a second time in the HR, and cooperation between the LDP …
Sankei Shimbun, whose website is probably the best among the websites of the major dailies, is posting a four-part series of articles online that breakdown the newspaper's public opinion polls. (Three of four have already been posted.) Regardless of the analysis provided in these pieces, they are worth looking at because they provide fine-grained analysis …
Following polls that showed the DPJ edging ahead of the LDP in party approval ratings and Mr. Fukuda's approval ratings falling to record lows — the lowest being Mainichi's 18% — Mr. Fukuda has suffered another blow in the latest Mainichi poll.If the claim that the "LDP is still more popular than the DPJ" was …
In recent weeks, some LDP leaders, hinting that the party might be willing to consider calling a general election sometime before September 2009, pointed to the party's ratings in public opinion polls. Polls have consistently shown the LDP polling higher than the DPJ, even as Prime Minister Fukuda's popularity has tanked. On this point, I …
As expected, the DPJ's Hiraoka Hideo is in a strong position with less than a week before the by-election in Yamaguchi's second district.A poll conducted by Mainichi over the weekend reveals that voters' concerns favor the DPJ. Health and welfare policy are the top priority (22%), followed by the pensions problem (20%), administrative reform (14%), …
By the late 1960s, just over a decade into LDP rule, the LDP was governing an increasingly wealthy but increasingly polluted Japan. This was bad enough for Japanese citizens forced to breathe polluted air, but it quickly became a political problem for the LDP.Dismayed by the lack of progress in the central government in addressing …
Painted into a corner over the gasoline tax issue, Prime Minister Fukuda attempted to undercut Ozawa Ichiro in an interview on NHK Sunday, suggesting that the impetus for a grand coalition came from Mr. Ozawa. The facts of the negotiations surrounding an LDP-DPJ grand coalition — especially Watanabe Tsuneo's role in it — may never …
The signs of change in the DPJ's thinking on the timing of the next general election discussed here is now a definite policy shift.As Mr. Ozawa told reporters in Kyoto Thursday, "We are struggling on the major premise of a dissolution this Diet session, although since the right to dissolve the Diet is held by …
Following on the heels of a Mainichi poll that shows a public both increasingly opposed to the Fukuda government and its plans related to the temporary gasoline tax and the road construction plan and eager for the LDP and DPJ to compromise (discussed in this post by Jun Okumura), Asahi has released its first opinion …
Tobias S. Harris 