Kishida and the politics of stability
Several new polls suggest that with the House of Councillors elections approaching, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio is benefiting from the same conditions that enabled former prime minister Abe Shinzō to survive in power from nearly eight years after returning in 2012.
The most thorough is probably the new Asahi Shimbun poll. The Kishida government’s approval rose four points to 59 percent, for a net approval of +33. This follows a 50.8% approval rating in Jiji’s latest — a slight decline but impressive given that Jiji’s approval ratings are usually an outlier at the low end — and 61.5% in Kyodo News. He also reached a record-high of 68.9% in a new Sankei-Fuji poll, which is probably an outlier at the high end. The point is that the latest round of poll is exceptionally positive for the prime minister as Japan’s politicians shift into campaign mode.
The drivers of Kishida’s political strength are not difficult to discern. First, opposition parties are still struggling to connect with voters. In the Asahi poll, only 13 percent say that they expect that the current opposition parties will serve as a force to oppose the LDP. 80 percent do not. Although 32 percent of respondents claim that they want the opposition to gain seats in the upcoming elections, the LDP’s lead in HOC polling is wide and growing. In Asahi, 42 percent say that they will vote for the LDP in the proportional party list balloting, compared to only 10 percent for the Constitutional Democratic Party and 11 percent for Ishin no Kai. In Jiji, those figures are 38.5%, 6.1%, and 6.3% respectively. In short, neither flavor of opposition — the center-left CDP or the center-right Ishin — is having much success attracting voters, particularly from among independents. Asahi found that 43% of independents as well as 40-50% of self-identified supporters of opposition parties approved of the Kishida cabinet, figures that will make it difficult for either opposition party to exceed expectations in July.
But I would argue there is another factor that explains the opposition’s struggles as well as Kishida’s robust approval: the Japanese public’s appetite for stability.1 I have long believed that the reason Abe was able to hold on to power after 2017, when his approval ratings suffered amidst sustained accusations of influence peddling, was that he was still seen as a steady pair of hands in an increasingly dangerous world. The public’s interest in political stability meant that the public was willing to tolerate more missteps by Abe, while also forcing the opposition to clear a punishingly high bar to demonstrate its fitness for power.
The latest round of polling is full of signs that the same dynamics are at work. Among the 59 percent who supported the Kishida government in the Asahi poll, 54 percent said their reason for supporting the government was because “better than the alternatives.” The cabinet’s support rate was robust even as respondents gave the government poor marks on economic policy (34 percent have high expectations for Kishida’s economic policies, 56 percent do not) and counter-inflation policies (23 percent approve, 66 percent do not, -9 and +13 respectively). The government fared better on its responses to Covid (62 percent approve, 32 disapprove) and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (62 percent approve, 27 percent disapprove). These figures suggest that there is a certain disconnect between the public’s opinion of the Kishida government and its policies, a dynamic that prevailed during the second Abe administration as well.
An article by Kimijima Hiroshi from Asahi’s public opinion bureau last month suggests that Kishida’s popularity rests on his not being disliked, making his approval broad but shallow. He argues that Kishida’s Achilles heel could be policy, as he noted that among those who did not support the Kishida government in last month’s poll, 46 percent of respondents said it was due to policy reasons. That figure was 43 percent in this month’s poll. But that’s 43 percent of the 26 percent who said they do not support the Kishida cabinet. I would argue that it is far more pertinent that the cabinet’s approval rating was 59 percent despite receiving poor marks in critical policy areas.
The upshot is that Kishida’s government could be able to withstand plenty of bad news and still enjoy respectable public support. Indeed, some bad news — let’s say a North Korean nuclear or ICBM test or troubling Chinese military activities — could be beneficial for Kishida and the LDP, producing a political “flight to safety,” all the more so given how favorably the public response has been to the LDP’s calls for more defense spending.
Given the ease with which Kishida has recreated the Abe formula for success, it increasingly appears that former prime minister Suga Yoshihide was just unlucky. He had the misfortune of being prime minister during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which a different set of political dynamics was operative. Now, with the pandemic receding, the pre-Covid dynamics are reemerging, with Kishida as the beneficiary.
Of course, there may be a key difference between Abe and Kishida: Abe was extraordinarily lucky, not just domestically but internationally. The China of 2022 is a significantly more formidable challenge than during most of Abe’s second administration; Kishida is in uncharted territory with Russia; and the global economy is substantially more turbulent. Even with a political flight to safety effect, the prospect of a genuinely destabilizing economic or diplomatic crisis means that we cannot assume that Kishida will match Abe’s endurance.
I am not saying that an interest in political stability is a permanent fixture. Koizumi Junichirō’s popularity would suggest otherwise.