Kishida cabinet's support rate falls to record low 32%: poll

Maybe this is why Kishida is so unpopular.

Roughly half of the LDP have close unification church ties:

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14714820

You're crazy if you think the Unification Church is the main problem, not the weak yen and rising prices that are eating into household incomes.

The prime minister revamped his cabinet last month by reshuffling some insiders, and introducing some hereditary nepotistic progeny and now banks on the economic measures consisting of corporate welfare and subsidies to businesses to jump-start public support by not mitigating the pain of rising living costs but initiating a PR initiative that the said goal of New Capitalism will be achieved by his measures that have a proven track record of being ineffective.

Fixes for accuracy.

The approval rating seems to be orthogonal to LDP power

32% has been about the same amount of time he's actually been in the country since becoming prime minister too. Ironic.

This country needs a stronger alternative to the old boy's club

Doesn't really matter as long as the LDP can keep winning elections, i.e as long as no other party has enough money and candidates to properly challenge them.

With increasing price why someone think that approval rate would go up?

Politicians can't control the economy. They only pretend they do.

The remaining 32% is what is surprising, or it would be on a healthy democracy, which apparently Japan is not.

By political party, the LDP maintained the highest support rate with 34.7 percent, which was followed by 13.2 percent favoring the opposition Japan Innovation Party, while 6.5 percent preferred the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.

The headline is much more dramatic than the actual information in this article. Kishida can run from one record to another in terms of unpopularity. Between the abysmal support for the opposition, the low turnout, and the first past the post system, nothing will change in Japan for the foreseeable future.

That's pretty good for Kashida san.

I thought it would be much lower.

Has Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida premiership ever really been perceived to step beyond the political shadow of former Prime Minster Shinzo Abe, or Abe economic policies.

Fumio Kishida continued lackluster, underwhelming attempts to fully weed out the Moonies cult from its toxic continued presence infesting his ruling party, as well as the Diet.

Then followed by another lukewarm approach response, reticence to fully investigate Johnny & Associates management business model, his alleged sexual abuse of minors, the Johnny & Associates still poisonous debilitating hold of TV programming and commercial broadcast industry.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida lacks political economic pizzazz.

Depopulation, child care, endless ineffective economic stimulus packages adding to the nations every bludgeoning debt cost requirement. A government in neutral.

18 to 30 generation that has never seen the inside of a voting booth, seemly unwilling to take part in any form of a democratic process.

Worst of all, a political opposition in a coma never able to pass first base.

I wanted to stick my photo on the local temporary wooden candidate bye election boarding I pass every day walking the dog, as the happy go lucky party of change.

Neighbors laughed out loud, that's never been done before

My entire family yesterday begging me not to.         

You will be arrested, we will all be in the newspaper, having a collective stroke.

"This country needs a stronger alternative to the old boy's club."

Absolutely. As someone said before, the young people are not interested in politics because they see no real alternative to LDP. Some of them are old enough to remember what happened when DPJ when they took office. That would discourage even the most optimistic ones! Who can tell about a real alternative that looks powerful enough to apply some changes that the Japanese society would thank?

...and that's why things doesn't seem to change in the very near future. I really hope that someone can prove wrong my pessimistic take on this.

They simply don't understand capitalism, so they also cannot bring New capitalism. It's not the current shrinking, aging, de-industdrialisation and money only in a very few hands, the rest beaten by unhealthy inflation. Capitalism is growing, at all costs, with money in all hands, not the same equal amount of course, but in all innovating, enterprise operators' and founders' as well all small consuming hands, accompanied by a low and healthy inflation and sufficient moderate taxes. I guee, making the opposite of what he currently does would be a first good step. That also doesn't require thinking but the error percentage becomes very much lower immediately.

Isn't this the case for every LDP prime minister for the last 20+ years? But let's keep voting in these incompetent fools

"I'm old enough to remember. DPJ got screwed by having to take the blame for 3/11 and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster which was due to decades of LDP corruption and incompetence. Talk about unfortunate timing. Apart from that they were trying to do some good things, one does not forget the sight of Renho grilling government bureaucrats about their wasteful spending or proposals to increase child support, decrease highway toll robbery fees etc. DPJ was not perfect but was a breath of fresh air after the stale LDP. The earthquake sank them."

I do agree with you. It wasn't just bad timing (maybe the worst of them all, I mean the strongest earthquake in Japan since humans can measure them and the devastating tsunami that came after!) it's also that (in my opinion) they committed the same mistake as LDP having different factions fighting between them instead of everyone working for a common objective within the party. They also failed on making their good deeds prevail over the mishandling of the 3/11 aftermath (lack of experience?).

It's definitely not a simple topic. I just hope that a real strong opposition party come and change things around. And I really hope that it happens sooner than later.

Cant wait to see the results of the next election

Because noone will vote, and nothing will change

As for calls for an income tax cut to fight inflation from senior members of the Komeito party

Well that is interesting.

Why don’t they first demand that the BOJ’s price instability target of 2% be dropped, and it return to a sounder policy of price stability?

Cutting income tax rates might encourage more people into work, boost production, and thus help to lower inflation… but with the economy otherwise in shackles, the government would probably see a loss of tax revenues, and thus more money printing… and thus more inflationary pressure.

Just cutting income tax rates some won’t fix Japan’s inflation problems, methinks.

Still refreshing to see Komeito suggest a more supply-side friendly policy for a change… even if that was unintentional of their part.

63.2 percent of respondents said the tax cut is necessary, whereas 33.5 percent said it is unnecessary.

Ask them if the government should increase public debt more too?

With Japan facing fiscal challenges … 82.1 percent said they are worried about Japan's fiscal health.

Well, duh.

They keep voting for idiots who keep making this problem worse so what do they expect? An income tax cut, yes… honestly the level of thought in the voters must be lower than I would like to assume.

The whole political system. It’s not just the leader. It’s all rubbish.

Kishida, should read some of the comments here permitting him to get his head out of the sand. If he and all the other old geezers in the government think that closing up their cash cow is going to win anyone over, NOT.

Now if they raise the interest rates, shore up the yen and bring down food prices they may get back on the winning streak. In fact, if they close up shop on all their cash cows including large corporations, raise minimum wage and do their job they may find people might side with them a little more.

Now don’t worry folks.jiminto will still be in power. We will realize we must change the leader, then go for an election, and win. Then he will become unpopular and we will replace him. Then we will rinse and repeat for another 30 years.

unless the opposition decide to create a single unified opposition party. LoL but that’s not gonna happen because they want their own little kohais.

unless the opposition decide to create a single unified opposition party.

So long as they agree to my policies, that would be wonderful.

Otherwise, I am not sure it would be an improvement.

justasking

Today 01:56 pm JST

Now if they raise the interest rates, shore up the yen and bring down food prices they may get back on the winning streak. In fact, if they close up shop on all their cash cows including large corporations, raise minimum wage and do their job they may find people might side with them a little more.

They don't need to do anything to get more people to side with them as long as they can keep winning elections with around 30% of the electorate supporting them.

The survey called 496 randomly selected households with eligible voters and 2,692 mobile phone numbers. It yielded responses from 410 household members and 616 mobile phone users.

So they got roughly 1000 responses.

And they actually had 320 of those people actually think he is doing a good job.

Are they morons?

So what about the other 680 people? The ones with common sense.

Will this lead to any changes or positivity?

Highly unlikely.

So what's the point of any of this?

No surprise as consumers in Japan suffer from stagflation. People are feeling poor as they look at the inept Kishida administration do nothing.

@Simon Foston

Doesn't really matter as long as the LDP can keep winning elections, i.e as long as no other party has enough money and candidates to properly challenge them

That's a cheap excuse. People don't vote for the opposition because their ideas are worse than the LDP. 

Only the Ishin election program offers a real and pragmatic alternative for Japan.

The reason that Kishida is such a failure is because he heads a party of the indolent and tired without a fresh thought in their decaying brains.

There are plenty of laws to deregulate and many others to regulate but all is hot air!

Shouldn't forget about the qualified invoice system that was just cemented in as well which is bad for most, but especially bad for small businesses and freelancers. More work and a 10% tax increase off the bat.

dougthehead13

Oct. 16 10:21 pm JST

@Simon Foston

"Doesn't really matter as long as the LDP can keep winning elections, i.e as long as no other party has enough money and candidates to properly challenge them"

That's a cheap excuse. People don't vote for the opposition because their ideas are worse than the LDP.

No, they don't vote for the opposition because there are no opposition candidates in a lot of districts. They don't have enough money for election campaigns.

Only the Ishin election program offers a real and pragmatic alternative for Japan.

That's nice.

dougthehead13

Oct. 16 10:21 pm JST

Only the Ishin election program offers a real and pragmatic alternative for Japan.

There aren't any Ishin candidates where I live.