世論 What Japan Thinks

Finally what I have been searching for, a bit late, but nonetheless, it’s the only survey I could find on the topic. DIMSDRIVE performed a public opinion poll on the two days right after the recent general election, questioning 3,598 people from all around the country in an internet-based survey. The source of the pool of respondents is not clear, however. 45.5% were male, 54.5% female, from all around the country. The Kanto area seems, however, a bit over-represented: 56.4% of panel lived there whereas the actual population is closer to 30% of the total Japanese population. This bias to urbanised areas might affect the Post Office privatisation opinions expressed later on.

Q: Did you vote in the election?

Yes	81.7%
No	18.3%

Note that the actual turnout was 67.5%, so perhaps a good number of the non-voters refused to participate in this survey too. The age and sex breakdown of voters is also interesting: 23.2% of the 20-29 year-old men didn’t vote, and 33.0% of the women of the same age didn’t. In the 40-49 years old bracket, both sexes are at just under 14%, and the 60 years old and over category has a mere 3% of non-participants in democracy.

Q: What was the most important policy issue for you?

Post office privatisation	32.9%
Pensions and benefits	22.7%
Political reform	7.7%
Education or population shrinkage	7.5%
Tax reform	7.0%
Economic measures	5.9%
Constitutional revision	1.6%
Foreign affairs	1.3%
Job creation measures	0.9%
Environmental problems	0.5%
Others	3.1%
Don’t know	1.0%
No important policies	8.1%

Regarding pensions and welfare, not too surprisingly the older the respondents got the more important it became! Some of the other issues that were listed as important were “fiscal issues”, “administration selection” (I think this means choosing the correct leaders for the country), “amakudari“, “anti-war”, “expressing tangible figures” (not sure what this one refers to), “restructuring”, etc.

Q: For those who voted, did you read any manifestos or other political promise documents? (Sample size=2,939)

Carefully read them	13.1%
Skim read them	36.1%
Glanced at them	20.7%
Had them but never read them	1.4%
Didn’t even receive one	28.7%

Q: For those who didn’t vote, why didn’t you vote? (Sample size=659)

I thought I wanted to vote, but there was no candidate or party (…I could support?)	31.0%
It was inconvenient, so I couldn’t go to the polling station	29.9%
I think it’s just the same whoever wins	22.0%
I don’t think my single vote makes any difference	19.6%
No interest in politics	12.9%
I didn’t know much about the candidates and parties	10.6%
Too far, or I was ill, etc, so I couldn’t go to the polling station	8.5%
I want to vote for policies, but not for parties	7.4%
I’m not on the electoral roll	0.5%
Others	9.0%
No particular reason	5.0%

Some of the other reasons recorded were “because it was raining”, “I didn’t study enough to be able to vote”, “it was predicted to be an LDP walk-over anyway”, “Too much noise about Post Office privatisation”, “I couldn’t choose who to vote for”, “I’m posted far away from home”, “I forgot”, “I lost my voting card”, etc.

Q: Do you think Post Office privatisation is necessary? (Sample size=3,598)

Rather necessary	28.5%
Fairly necessary	36.3%
Can’t say one way or the other	20.8%
Not really necessary	7.9%
Not necessary at all	5.9%
Difficult to say	0.6%

For those who voted, the opinions on privatisation were in line with the table above, with an extra 3% viewing it as rather essential, and a corresponding 3% less sitting on the fence. However, for non-voters, these two figures were basically reversed, with only 16.7% strongly favouring it and 32.2% undecided.

Strangely, I thought, looking at the age breakdown, the older one gets the more in favour of privatisation they become. Only about 20% of the youngest age group saw it as rather necessary, yet 45% of the pensioner age group favoured it. As age increased, the rather necessary fraction steadily increased at the expense of the undecided fraction only. Given that the older one gets the more one may rely on the services of the Post Office, and given some of the (basically untrue) stories about wholescale branch closure, I find this a result worthy of further study.

Q: Did your interest in politics increase during this election period?

	All (N=3,598)	Voters (N=2,939)	Non-voters (N=659)
Increased rather a lot	14.5%	16.1%	7.3%
Increased a bit	33.8%	34.9%	28.7%
Not really changed	48.4%	45.7%	59.9%
Decreased a bit	1.6%	1.7%	1.1%
Decreased a lot	1.9%	1.6%	3.0%

Looking at the age and sex breakdown, the only significant figure seems to be that over half the old ladies are now significantly more interested in politics, although it is worthy of note that there was only 37 women over 60 who took part in the survey, so these figures may be biased by the small group.