Japan in Shock: Approval Ratings Plummet to 12% in Just One Month – What’s Behind the Sudden Collapse

Only a month after taking office, the approval rating of the Prime Minister of Japan, Shigeru Ishiba, plunged 12 percentage points in a month, reaching the level of 30 percent. In particular, a survey showed that about half of Japanese people do not trust Prime Minister Ishiba’s words and actions.

On the 4th, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun published the results of a survey conducted on the 2nd and 3rd. According to this, the approval rate of the Ishiba cabinet was calculated to be 34%, down 12 percentage points from the survey on the 1st and 2nd of last month. The proportion of respondents who “do not support” the cabinet rose significantly from 30% to 47%.

The Asahi Shimbun noted, “It is unusual for the cabinet’s approval rating to drop this much in a short period of time.” Similar results were also obtained in a survey by the Japanese private broadcaster JNN during the same period.

The approval rating of the Ishiba cabinet has been low since its launch compared to the time the previous administration was launched, and in a survey conducted by Jiji News Agency in the middle of last month, it recorded 28.0%, which was considered to be on the a level of ‘resignation crisis’.

In a survey by Asahi Shimbun, 82% of respondents believed that the slush fund problem was one of the main reasons why the ruling coalition lost less than half of the seats in Japan’s general election held on the 27th last month. In addition, 64% responded that they were “lucky” that the ruling party had lost in this election.

63% of people expressed their support for the three-party cooperation plan to discuss the budget and the tax system with the People’s Democratic Party so that the ruling party can move forward in this election and hold the casting vote.

The People’s Democratic Party argues that the annual income limit that is not subject to income tax should be raised from the current 1.03 million yen (about 9.3 million earned) to 1.78 million yen (about 16.1 million earned).

In addition, when asked if they could trust Prime Minister Ishiba’s words and actions, 51% responded that they could not be trusted. Only half of the response (26%) was the response “it is reliable”.

However, despite this, 24% of respondents believed that Prime Minister Ishiba should “relinquish” his position as prime minister after receiving the election results, which was much lower than the 61% who responded “that is not necessary.”

This is believed to be because the government was only recently launched, so there are many who still think they should wait a little longer to see how the government operates.

In the future, 43% of the respondents said that the Liberal Democratic Party is good to continue, and it was much more than 32% of the respondents who said, “It is better to change to the constitutional Democratic Party.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ishiba is said to have begun coordination to appoint former Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Taku Eto and former Deputy Foreign Minister Keisuke Suzuki as successors to Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Yasuhiro Ozato and Minister Justice Hideki Makihara, respectively, were defeated in the general election.

Prime Minister Ishiba plans to retain most of his cabinet members if he is re-elected in the prime minister nomination election expected to be held on the 11th.