The decline in Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s approval rating is out of control. His approval rating continues to fall due to negative news about the tax cut policy and the successive resignations of three vice minister-level officials. If this continues, some say it would not be surprising if Prime Minister Kishida resigns.
According to an Asahi Shimbun opinion poll on the 20th, the Kishida cabinet’s approval rating was 25%, down 4 percentage points from a month ago. Not only is it the lowest level since taking office in October 2021, but it is also the lowest in 11 years since former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in December 2012. Opinion polls by the Yomiuri Shimbun (24%) and Mainichi Shimbun (21%) released on this day also showed similar approval ratings.
In Japan, an approval rating of 20% in media opinion polls is considered a ‘risk level’ for the government to be shaken. In July 2017, when former Prime Minister Abe was in the greatest crisis over the controversy over preferential treatment for private school corporations, his approval rating was 33% (Asahi Shimbun survey), and in 2021, just before former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that he would not run in the LDP presidential election. The approval rating in August was 28%.
In Japan, there is the so-called ‘Aoki’s Law’, which determines that a regime’s lifespan is over when the combined approval ratings of the cabinet and ruling party fall below 50%. Considering that the Liberal Democratic Party’s approval rating is currently in the mid-20% range, the figures have already crossed the Maginot Line.
Inside the Liberal Democratic Party, there are criticisms that “this is a strange figure in which the approval rating has not only hit rock bottom” and “it is similar to the end of the Aso cabinet in 2009, when power was handed over to the Democratic Party.” In Japan, a country with a parliamentary system in which the president of the ruling party serves as prime minister, the term of office for the president of the current ruling Liberal Democratic Party is three years, but regardless of the term of office, the president can step down at any time and elect a new prime minister through a vote within the party.
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Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.