Arab News Japan

TOKYO: With the Olympic Games just a week away, Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has seen his support rate shrink below the politically sensitive 30% level while opposition to his cabinet soared to over 60%, Japanese media has reported.

A national opinion poll conducted jointly by the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper and the Center for Social Research conducted on July 17 showed the approval rating of the Suga Cabinet at 30%, down four points from last month. It is the Suga Cabinet’s lowest rating since it was inaugurated in September 2020. 

Meanwhile, the disapproval rate was at 62%, up seven points from the previous month and the worst ever for Suga.

The swing in both rates was strongly influenced by public reaction to the Olympic Games and the government’s handling of the pandemic.

As for whether they are looking forward to the Olympics, 35% of the participants in the Mainichi survey said they were looking forward to it, which was lower than 48% who said they didn’t feel like it was something they could enjoy and the 17% whosaid they were not looking forward to it. Some 65% said they didn’t think the Olympic Games could be held in a “safe and secure” environment.

The Jiji Press survey showed that public approval for Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s Cabinet had dipped to 29.3%. It is said in Japan a rating below 30% support rate is the death knell for a government. However, Suga said he was confident of staying the course and even said he was planning to run for a second term as LDP president. 

A poll by the conservative Yomiuri Public Opinion had Suga’s approval rating unchanged at 37% from a month before, but his disapproval rating reached a record 53%.

The government recently declared a fourth state of emergency to cover the Olympic Games period and has come under sustained criticism for its slow and erratic vaccine rollout.

In the July survey, the proportion of respondents who negatively rated the government’s response to the virus crisis grew 4.0 points to 59.1%.

The support rate for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party fell 1.4 points to 21.4%, while that for Komeito, the ruling party’s coalition partner, dropped 1.2 points to 2.5%. The approval rate for the main opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, rose 1.6 points to 4.5%.