Japanese cabinet’s approval rate dives into danger zone: Poll

The Japanese Cabinet’s public approval rating plummeted to 29 per cent, dropping below 30 per cent into a “danger zone”, a new poll has revealed.The poll conducted released on Sunday showed that the support rate of the government headed by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stood at 29 per cent, down 7 percentage points from the 36 percent in the previous survey in August, a record low since he took office in October 2021, reports Xinhua news agency.A public support rating below 30 per cent is commonly viewed as a “danger zone” for the cabinet.The approval rating of Japan’s main ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) also dropped 6 percentage points from the previous poll to 23 per cent.The sharp drop in the approval ratings for the Cabinet and the LDP is blamed partly on Japanese politicians’ controversial links to the religious group of Unification Church.Only 12 per cent of respondents said they “approve of” Kishida’s response to the issue of Japanese politicians’ ties to the Unification Church, far less than the 72 per cent who said they did not.On September 8, the LDP said its in-house survey has found that 179, or nearly half of its Diet members, had some links with the church.Since the survey was based on self-reporting, most of the respondents were not convinced.