世論 What Japan Thinks

As I work in the Osaka area, the outcome of the Osaka prefectural governor election (this Sunday 27th January 2008) will have some effect on me, and with some guy off the telly as the front-runner, I sincerely hope he won’t turn out to be another Hideo Higashikokubaru (Sonomanma Higashi) and appear on the box every night. In his defense, I saw that over the first year of his governorship he has been credited with giving the local economy a 100 billion yen (1 billion US dollar) boost

The first figure that the report from the Yomiuri Shimbun picked up on was the intention to vote. A healthy two in three said they would definitely turn out, with slightly more men that women saying they would vote. By age group, 78% of the over-seventies would definitely be voting, with 69% of those in their fifties would also definitely vote. However, only 43% of those in their twenties had definite plans, although another 49% said they’d try to vote, making 92% in total of all young people who might participate in the vote.

Fusae Ohta, the current but retiring governer, was rated poorly or not at all by 50% of the responents, versus 47% who rated her highly or to some extent. She got caught out in a money-related scandal last December, taking paid speaking engagements and registering her mother’s Tokyo flat as an office, so about 30% thought it was only natural that she didn’t seek to be a candidate, and around another tenth thought she should have quit earlier.

When asked about which party they supported, 29.2% said the ruling LDP, 24.7% the opposition DPJ, 4.1% New Komeito, 3.5% Communist, and 0.7% the SDP; 35.5% described themselves as not supporting any party. As a final bonus question, only 30.3% said they supported Yasuo Fukuda’s cabinet versus 56.9% opposed to it.

As for the actual election vote itself, another report from the Yomiuri Shimbun on the same poll reported that that guy off the telly, Toru Hashimoto, has the support of around half the LDP voters, 80% of the New Komeito voters, 20% of the DPJ votes, and 30% of the unaligned voters. His strongest demographics are those in their twenties and thirties with about 40% supporting him, and just under 40% of women too.

Next is Sadatoshi Kumagai (who seems to authored a fair number of technical papers on Petri Nets and other stuff), with about 60% of the DPJ vote, under 20% of the LDP’s, and 20% of the non-aligned votes. He is stronger with men, with over 30% backing him, and with people in their forties and fities, with around 30% support there too. Shoji Umeda for the Communists has around 80% of the Communist vote sealed up but almost no other significant support. However, over 30% of the non-aligned voters are still to decide who to vote for.

The fieldwork for this survey was conducted between the 18th and 20th of January 2008 by randomly dialing numbers in Osaka prefecture. 1,713 people were contacted, and 1,037 chose to take part, a response rate of 61%.