According to the joint public opinion poll conducted by the Sankei Shimbun and the Fuji News Network (FNN) on Dec. 18–19, a plurality of 66.4% of respondents said they support the Kishida Cabinet, up 3.2 percentage points from the previous survey (conducted on Nov. 13–14). The disapproval rate was 26.2%, down 4.5 points from last month’s poll. Respondents were split on whether Japan should announce a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Games scheduled for February next year, with 45.4% saying Japan should and 44.1% saying Japan should not.

This is the third straight month that the Kishida Cabinet, which was first launched in October, has had the support of over 60% of respondents. Asked for their views on the Kishida administration’s COVID-19 measures, 67.7% said they approved of the Prime Minister’s handling of the pandemic (up 7.8 points from the previous month) while 24.5% said they did not (down 10.6 points). Meanwhile, 84.3% of pollees said that they approve of the government’s barring, in principle, all new foreign visitors from entering Japan. Only 12.0% of respondents disagreed with the policy.

Regarding the government plan to give handouts worth 100,000 yen to households with children age 18 or under, 61.9% of pollees said the handouts should be distributed in one installment in cash only. Meanwhile, only 5.5% of respondents said the handouts should be distributed in two installments, one in cash and one in vouchers, 10.2% of pollees said that the handouts should be distributed in two installments in cash only, and 19.8% said there is no need for the 100,000 yen handouts.

Over half of respondents said they are not optimistic about the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ) under its new leader, Izumi Kenta, with 34.3% saying they are not very optimistic and 22.9% saying they are not optimistic at all. Meanwhile, 6.6% said they are very hopeful and 28.0% said that they are somewhat optimistic.

For the second month in a row, Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party) was the main opposition party (with backing of 8.1% of respondents), exceeding the CDPJ (7.2%). Other party support rates were as follows: Liberal Democratic Party, 38.6%%; Komeito, 3.6%; Democratic Party for the People, 1.7%; JCP, 2.6%.

[Polling methodology: A total of 1,033 men and women, aged 18 and over, across the nation were surveyed. The nation was divided into 11 blocs corresponding to the Lower House proportional representation districts. The survey was conducted by placing telephone calls on a random digit dialing (RDD) basis until the calculated number of responses obtained from each bloc corresponded to that bloc’s relative population. A weighted adjustment was then performed for such variables as gender and age. Calls were placed to both landline and mobile numbers in the ratio of 4:6. The following follow-up question was posed to respondents who gave an unclear answer to the question about Cabinet support: “Which is closer to your view?” The responses to the follow-up questions were added to the responses to the initial question. The survey was conducted on Dec. 18–19, 2021.]