Japan PM Kishida’s support plunges amid stale ideas, LDP scandals: ‘he’s on autopilot’
- Fumio Kishida pitched himself early on as a less aggressive leader than Abe and Suga, but has since adopted their security and economic policies
- Talk of his successor is growing as many doubt Kishida’s ability to make ‘fundamental changes’ to deal with rising costs, stagnant wages and a ‘huge’ national debt
Now, they suggest, he is unlikely to be able to cling onto power until the vote for the head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) next autumn, with some media outlets already speculating as to his successor.
A poll published by the conservative-leaning Yomiuri newspaper on Tuesday indicated Kishida’s support had slumped to a “dangerously low” 24 per cent, the lowest since the LDP was re-elected in 2012 and significantly below the 28 per cent support rate for his immediate predecessor, Yoshihide Suga, shortly before his resignation in October 2021.
Kishida’s standing was even worse in two other polls published on Monday, one by Jiji Press and another by the Mainichi Shimbun, both of which put him on a mere 21 per cent public support rate. That figure was down 4 percentage points from the last poll, in mid-October, while the disapproval rate for the cabinet stood at 74 per cent, up 6 percentage points.
It is all a far cry from figures in the high-60s when Kishida was named prime minister just over two years ago, said Koichi Nakano, a professor of political science at Tokyo’s Sophia University.
