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Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is considering calling a general election as early as next month, according to ruling party members, as she seeks to use her sky-high approval ratings to reclaim her party’s parliamentary majority.
One plan under discussion would involve dissolving the lower house of parliament immediately after it reconvenes on January 23 for a general election around the second week of February, said a senior member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
Takaichi has not given any clear indication of the timing of a potential election.
The yen fell on Friday to its lowest level in a year, driven by concerns that a snap election could delay approval of next year’s budget and disrupt the government’s economic plans. Markets are closed in Japan on Monday.
Takaichi has shaken up Japan’s ruling party since becoming the country’s first female prime minister late last year, as she has sought to restore its status as a national vote-winning machine.
The LDP suffered a series of election setbacks under her predecessor Shigeru Ishiba, including the loss of its outright parliamentary majority, forcing it to rely on smaller coalition partners.
Her cabinet approval ratings are running at about 70 per cent, and are higher among Japanese in their 30s, particularly women, according to recent polls.
While some analysts said that comments from politicians and the confident tone in domestic media suggested a February election was a “done deal”, several senior members of the LDP including one former cabinet minister warned that such a conclusion was premature.
An alternative timeline would target an election in July at the earliest, giving the LDP six months to prepare, said one official.
In her three months in office, Takaichi has attempted to relieve Japan’s cost-of-living crisis, pledging a $135bn stimulus package.
She has also held firm in a diplomatic row with China, which could threaten Japanese manufacturers by restricting exports of rare earths.
But the risk of a miscalculation was high, said Tobias Harris, a political analyst and founder of Japan Foresight, who warned that there was no guarantee that Takaichi’s personal popularity would translate into a broad swing of renewed support for the LDP.
“There is a lot that could go wrong,” he said. “For Takaichi, who has made such a point of saying that she is so focused on dealing with Japan’s many crises, it is difficult to say she is putting her country first if she now switches to focus on an election.”
Yu Uchiyama, a political scientist at Tokyo University, said Takaichi owed her popularity to her origins outside Japan’s traditional political elite, with which much of the public has become disillusioned, and to the way Japanese politics have broadly shifted to the right.
Her hawkish image on both China and immigration reflected the new political atmosphere in Japan, Uchiyama said, and a general election would test whether the LDP under Takaichi could win back voters who had defected to rightwing, populist parties.
“There has been growing political distrust in the LDP,” said Uchiyama. But Takaichi had raised expectations that she “can change politics and the LDP”, he added. “Her attitude and way of thinking is very decisive. People think she will exert strong leadership, and many people like that.”
