Ishiba's slide resumes

New wave of polling shows little confidence in the prime minister or his party

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Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru and other government officials meet with ruling party officials on 21 January. Source: Prime Minister’s Office of Japan

A new wave of opinion polling – the first big collection of the new year – suggests that whatever benefit Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru got from the lull during the New Year’s holiday, it has largely dissipated. New polling from the Mainichi, Yomiuri, Asahi, and Sankei Shimbun all suggest that not only is the government’s support continuing to slide, but the outlook for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the July upper house elections may also be difficult.

While the drops in the government’s support were not large – with the exception of an eight-point increase in disapproval in the Asahi poll, part of an eleven-point drop in net approval – the trajectory was clear, with net approval getting steadily worse across the board. As of 20 January, in my ten-day moving average of the government’s support, its net approval was 34.15 percent to average disapproval of 48.16 percent, a significant increase in disapproval due to the government’s disapproval being at or around fifty percent in all four new polls.¹ This batch of polling also included the government’s approval rating in Mainichi dipping below 30 percent, to 28 percent, though Mainichi is usually the biggest outlier on the negative side for LDP prime ministers.