Over Half of Japanese Voters Say Abe Government's COVID Response Was Not Positive

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (Photo by Yonhap News)

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyo-jin] More than half of Japanese voters have a negative view of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government's response to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19).

In a public opinion survey conducted by Kyodo News from the 8th to the 10th targeting Japanese voters, 57.5% of respondents said they did not positively evaluate the Japanese government's response to COVID-19. Only 34.1% responded positively. 84.4% reported feeling anxious about their daily lives due to the spread of COVID-19.

The percentage of respondents who do not support the Abe Cabinet remained at 43.0%, the same as in the survey conducted from the 11th to the 13th of last month. Those who said they support the Abe Cabinet accounted for 41.7%. Although the approval rating rose by 1.3 percentage points compared to last month's survey, support still lagged behind criticism.

Prime Minister Abe extended the state of emergency, originally scheduled to end on the 6th of this month, by 25 days until the end of the month, but was criticized for lacking an exit strategy as no specific criteria for lifting the emergency were presented.

In last month's Kyodo News survey, 80.4% of respondents said the declaration of the state of emergency was too late, indicating that Japanese public opinion is generally critical of the Abe Cabinet's response to COVID-19.

Meanwhile, NHK reported that according to an online survey conducted from the 3rd to the 19th of last month by research institutions based in Singapore and others, targeting over 12,000 people aged 18 to 80 across 23 countries and regions, Japan ranked lowest in the overall evaluation of leaders' COVID-19 response leadership.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.