Does Kishida’s Approval Rating Signal a Return to the ‘Revolving Door’ of Prime Ministers?

Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio marked one year in the prime ministerial office on October 4, 2022. In a poll conducted by Yomiuri Shimbun on October 1-2 – just ahead of this milestone – for the first time since he took office, more respondents (46 percent) disapproved of the Kishida cabinet than approved of it (45 percent). This was also the first time that Kishida’s approval ratings dropped below 50 percent.

Disapproval likely stems from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) politicians’ ties to the Unification Church, inflation, and the state funeral held for former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in late September. In the same Yomiuri Shimbun poll, 80 percent of respondents answered that Kishida was not showing leadership on the issue of LDP ties to the Unification Church, 73 percent did not appreciate how the government was handling inflation, and 54 percent did not think it was a good thing that the state funeral was held.

Although Kishida’s current support level is significantly below the 65 percent level marked in July 2022, just after the LDP’s strong showing in the Upper House election, it is not historically low. Looking at recent history, Abe’s approval rate dipped below Kishida’s current rate several times: reaching 41 percent in September 2015, 36 percent in July 2017, 41 percent in October 2017, and 39 percent in April 2019. Abe’s lowest approval rating came in August 2020 – in the midst of the escalating COVID-19 pandemic – when it dipped to 37 percent and he resigned for health reasons.

Suga Yoshihide managed to stay in power with a 39 percent approval rating in February 2021, though he did announce his resignation when in August 2021 his approval ratings dipped to 35 percent; his numbers continued to slide down until hitting 31 percent in September 2021, just before Kishida formed his new cabinet.

The prime minister’s approval ratings are important to longevity in office because the leader is the face of the party. A popular prime minister will garner more voters for their party, and an unpopular prime minister will drive away voters. As voters do not directly “vote out” a prime minister, approval ratings’ effect is mediated through the party’s willingness to stand by or disown the prime minister.

This, however, was not always true in the context of Japanese politics.

Ellis S. Krauss and Benjamin Nyblade put the “presidentialization” of the Japanese prime minister as beginning in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. While the 1993 electoral reform gets a lot of the attention, voting for the House of Councillors was reformed in the early 1980s to introduce proportional representation. The introduction of proportional representation for the first time made voters consider the party and not the individual candidate standing for election, increasing the importance of the party label and prime minister’s public image. Before then, the prime minister was “the missing leader” in Japanese politics, more of a facilitator than a true leader.

Another concurrent factor was the declining vote share of the LDP beginning in the mid-1970s and the increasing percentage of swing or “floating” voters who cared more about policy and issues. The growing presence of floating voters meant that parties and politicians had to attract voters who were not committed to any party – thus increasing the importance of the prime minister’s public image. The growing clout of TV news and personalized news coverage in Japan since 1985 also played an important role in tying together the prime minister and party’s fates – making the party responsible for ousting any prime minister who was unpopular enough to drag the party down.

Not only did the prime minister’s image take on importance beginning in the mid-1970s, but the prime minister’s position also began to matter more after institutional reforms to strengthen the core executive during Hashimoto Ryutaro’s cabinet (1996-1998), as Tomohito Shinoda has pointed out. The creation of new institutions such as the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy and the National Security Council also helped turn the Japanese system into a “prime ministerial government.”

Although the prime minister’s image became increasingly important to the party’s electoral fate since the mid-1970s and the prime minister’s preferences became increasingly important to the policies their party implemented since the mid-1990s, the prime minister has also been subject to short tenures in the 21st century. These three phenomena are interconnected.

Benjamin Nyblade’s argument about the hyper-accountability of the prime minister in the context of the 2006-2010 period is that the rapid turnovers are “a perverse consequence of the increased prominence and influence of the post and the greater electoral importance of the party label in a time of great electoral volatility and voter dissatisfaction.”

He further elaborates:

As a greater proportion of rank-and-file Diet Members of the governing party are dependent on the prime minister’s coattails and overall voter evaluation of the party’s performance for re-election, the incentives to replace unpopular PMs with a fresh face (and a new honeymoon period) is strong. In a time of strongly divided government and weak economic performance leaders may find it particularly difficult to maintain the support of swing voters and the perch at the top may be particularly precarious.

While Kishida is not yet in the danger zone in terms of his polling numbers, the divisiveness introduced by Abe’s assassination – both the ties to the Unification Church that the assassin’s motives exposed and the decision to hold a state funeral – and economic precarity introduced by inflation present an unforgiving backdrop for his next moves.

Yu Uchiyama, comparing the short tenures of prime ministers between 2006-2010 and Koizumi and Abe’s long tenures, argues that electoral reform made the position of party president potentially more stable. The emphasis is on “potentially,” because whether the party president’s position is actually stable or not depends on their popularity. Once they lose popularity, their situation is likely to become fluid and their position is vulnerable because of the personalization of politics, or of the leader becoming the “face of the party.”

There is some good news for Kishida, however, as prime ministers with short tenures see their approval ratings drop to under 30 percent within a year after assuming the premiership. He can celebrate his first year in the position knowing that his approval numbers are comparable to those prime ministers who enjoyed a bit more stability.