Japan LDP top in poll as election campaign starts

TOKYO (Reuters) – The ruling party of Japan’s Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi had nearly twice the support of its
main opposition rival as campaigning for a general election
began on Tuesday, an opinion poll showed.

Koizumi called the September 11 election, which he has said
is a referendum on reform, after rebels in his Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) joined the opposition this month to vote
down bills to privatize the postal system, the core of his
reform agenda.

The unusually dramatic campaign, in which Koizumi has been
cast by media as a feudal lord sending “assassins” to stand as
candidates against “traitors” from his own party, has prompted
strong interest among Japan’s usually apathetic voters.

The poll published on Tuesday by the Tokyo Shimbun,
covering 3,600 voters across the nation, found 43.4 percent
intend to vote for the LDP in single-seat districts, roughly
the same percentage as those who actually did vote for the
party in the last general election in 2003.

In that election, while the coalition government held onto
power, the LDP fell short of a simple majority of 241 seats in
the 480-seat lower house.

The party regained a majority only after several
independents joined and it absorbed its smallest coalition
partner.

According to the Tokyo Shimbun survey, only 23.4 percent
said they would vote for the main opposition Democratic Party
in single-seat districts, down more than 13 points from the
number who did so in 2003.

Some 40.9 percent said they would vote for the LDP in
proportional representation districts, up from 35.0 percent in
the 2003 election, while 24.2 percent said they would vote for
the Democrats, also down more than 13 points from 2003.

Around 10 percent of voters surveyed were undecided.

Single-member districts return 300 seats, which go to the
candidate with the most votes. The remaining 180 seats are for
proportional representation districts from 11 regional blocks
in which voters choose either a candidate or a party.

Koizumi has said he will resign if the LDP and its
coalition partner, the New Komeito, fail to win a majority.
Katsuya Okada, the leader of the Democrats, has also vowed to
quit if his party cannot take power.

Asked what sort of government they wanted, 51 percent
favored a government centered on the LDP against 34.8 percent
for one centered on the Democrats.

Most opinion polls published prior to the start of
campaigning have shown the LDP with a wide lead, although two
over the weekend said support for the Democrats had risen
slightly, especially among “floating” voters, or those
uncommitted to any particular party.

The LDP, which has ruled alone or in a coalition for most
of the past half century, had 249 seats in the chamber before
it was dissolved, while the Democrats had 175.

But the LDP refused to recognize as official candidates 37
incumbents who voted against Koizumi’s bills to privatize the
huge postal system, a vast financial entity including savings
and insurance businesses with $3 trillion in assets, which has
long been a source of funds for wasteful public works projects.