Aso Cabinet's approval rating recovers to 23.4%: Kyodo poll

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TOKYO, July 5 Kyodo -
The support rate for Prime Minister Taro Aso's Cabinet has recovered to 23.4
percent, up 5.9 percentage points from the previous poll, a Kyodo News survey
showed Sunday, giving a boost to the embattled Japanese leader ahead of an
impending general election due to the recent revelation of a scandal involving
the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan.
The disapproval rating for the Cabinet was 60.9 percent in the nationwide
telephone survey conducted Friday and Saturday, down 9.7 points from the poll
in June.
While the DPJ maintained the top spot when respondents were asked which
political party they would vote for in the proportional representation section
at the next House of Representatives election which must be held by the fall,
the rate dropped 13.5 points to 34.3 percent.
Those who said they would vote for Aso's Liberal Democratic Party rose 7.6
points from June to 26.3 percent.
In another positive result for Aso, the LDP overtook the DPJ in terms of
political party approval ratings, garnering 27.2 percent against the largest
opposition party's 26.5 percent.
In the June survey, 38.5 percent of respondents expressed support for the DPJ,
compared with 19.8 percent for the LDP.
The approval rating for the Aso Cabinet had plunged last month after having
shown a recovery in previous months due to a political funds scandal involving
former DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa, but the figure is seen to have recovered this
time owing to another scandal in connection with Ozawa's successor Yukio
Hatoyama.
In the poll, only 12.4 percent said they were satisfied with Hatoyama's
explanations about the revelation of the falsification of a political funds
report related to him, with a whopping 78.3 percent saying they were
dissatisfied.
But many of the 1,022 respondents questioned Aso's recent decision not to
change the LDP leadership as well as his Cabinet reshuffle, which was limited
to adding two new faces to the lineup to take up ministerial posts that had
been handled by other Cabinet members.
Those who said the prime minister should not have gone through with a Cabinet
reshuffle at all totaled 43.3 percent, while 25.1 percent thought a limited one
was inevitable and 19.6 percent wanted him to carry out a thorough change in
the lineup.
While 38.7 percent did not approve of the minor Cabinet reshuffle, a mere 8.9
percent said they did.
Hatoyama remained the more popular choice than Aso when respondents were asked
which of them was more suited to be prime minister, receiving support from 42.0
percent while Aso got 28.3 percent.
The gap between their ratings, however, diminished to less than half the 28.9
percentage points in last month's survey.
A total of 26.6 percent of those surveyed said a DPJ-led ruling coalition would
be desirable, while 19.6 percent said they would prefer an LDP-led governing
bloc and 13.9 percent said they want to see a coalition between the LDP and the
DPJ.
==Kyodo