Upper House Election: LDP Holds Sense of Crisis About Upper House Election; Maintaining Majority Will Be Key

By Ryuichi Sato and Kota Ifuku / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers

16:11 JST, June 30, 2025

The government and the Liberal Democratic Party are feeling an increasing sense of crisis over the House of Councillors election in July, as the approval rating of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has remained low in nationwide public opinion polls by The Yomiuri Shimbun.

The public also has a low opinion of a Cabinet plan to provide the public with cash benefits as part of its measures to cope with rising prices.

Additionally, the LDP still has not formulated a strategy to bounce back from a major setback suffered in the recent Tokyo metropolitan assembly election.

On Sunday, Ishiba, the LDP’s president, spoke about his determination to win the upper house election. “I will make utmost efforts to ensure that [the LDP] and our ally party, Komeito, will be able to gain a stable number of seats,” he said.

Ishiba made the remark at a meeting of the Reinventing Infrastructure of Wisdom and Action (ReIWA), a national council comprising business leaders and academic experts that discusses government policies. The meeting, which took place in Tokyo, was held to facilitate an exchange of opinions between its members.

In terms of what would constitute winning the upper house election, Ishiba has previously expressed the idea of maintaining the ruling camp’s majority, which would be achieved if the two ruling parties were able to secure a total of 125 seats, including seats which are not contested.

Ishiba at the meeting reiterated that this goal remains unchanged. The LDP has 62 uncontested seats in the upper house, while Komeito has 13. Therefore, if the two parties win a total of 50 seats, the ruling camp can keep its majority.

However, the Cabinet approval rating is 32%, almost unchanged from 31% in a survey in May. Also, the latest poll shows that 24% of respondents favor the LDP in the upcoming vote for proportional representation. That figure has fallen greatly from 45% in a survey three years ago, when the last upper house election was held.

“We must make more and more efforts,” LDP Secretary General Hiroshi Moriyama said about how the ruling camp would maintain its majority in the wake of the LDP’s major setback in the Tokyo assembly election.

Komeito is also desperate to regain its momentum. Speaking on Sunday about the poor results of the opinion poll, Secretary General Makoto Nishida said, “They indicate that our measures to cope with rising prices are still insufficient.”

One of the few favorable factors for the government and ruling parties is that the average price of rice sold at supermarkets nationwide has fallen to just over ¥3,000 level per five kilograms — the first time the average price has fallen to that level in three and a half months.

On the other hand, the ruling camp’s pledge to provide ¥20,000 in cash benefits to each member of the public — ¥40,000 for children and low-income earners — as a measure to cope with rising prices is being severely criticized.

Opposition parties’ moves

Leaders of other political parties also gave their remarks at the ReIWA council meeting.

“My goal at a minimum is to force the ruling parties into a situation where they fall short of the majority of the contested seats,” said Yoshihiko Noda, leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. “To deprive the ruling parties of their majority in the upper house, I will work to maximize the number of seats won by any opposition party.”

However, opposition parties have not received much tailwind. Support for the CDPJ and the Japan Innovation Party lags far behind the LDP.

The Democratic Party for the People, which greatly increased its seats in last autumn’s House of Representatives election, fell into confusion over which candidates to select for the upcoming upper house election. As a result, support for the DPFP fell six percentage points from the previous survey to 5%.

In contrast, new conservative parties, such as Sanseito, have recently increased their seats in local assembly elections and gained supporters.

A senior member of the ruling camp, expressing a sense of urgency, said, “The LDP’s supporters are being lured into conservative opposition parties.”