世論 What Japan Thinks

With the election for the upper house upon us, although the government has lifted the ban on political party web pages (they used to have to blank) so the candidates are now able to update their blogs, etc, email and Twitter remains banned. To see what people think, goo Research, in conjuction with the Mainichi Shimbun, took a look at what people thought of internet-based election campaigns.

Demographics

Over the 8th and 9th of June 2010 1,079 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. All were of voting age, but no further demographic breakdown was given.

Note that as usual for this kind of report, don’t knows have been eliminated, so I cannot give a sample size for each of the questions.

At least one candidate is ignoring the ban, however.

Research results

Q1: How do you rate the lifting of the ban of updating blogs and web sites by political parties and candidates during the election campaign?

Agree with it	80%
Disagree with it	20%

Q2: Should email and Twitter also be allowed?

Yes, both	22%
Yes, email only	12%
Yes, Twitter only	9%
No, both should not be	57%

Q3: During the election period, will you look at party or candidate web sites or blogs?

Yes	38%
No	62%

Only 25% of those in their twenties would view, whilst 49% of those in their sixties or older would.