As campaign starts in Japan:

Opposition leads poll

JAPAN: Japan’s main opposition party holds a wide lead over Prime Minister Taro Aso’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in voter polls as official campaigning kicks off for an Aug. 30 election, newspaper reports showed on Tuesday.

A victory for the opposition Democratic Party, which has vowed to pay more heed to consumers than companies and to break bureaucrats’ grip on policy-making, would put Aso’s conservative LDP out of power after an almost unbroken reign of more than 50 years.

In a voter survey by the daily Asahi newspaper, 40 percent of respondents said they would vote for the Democrats in proportional representation districts for the election, up slightly from the previous survey in early August.

Of the 1,011 voters surveyed, 21 percent opted for the LDP. Another poll by the daily Tokyo Shimbun showed similar results. The LDP has suffered from voter frustration over the sluggish economy, which data showed on Monday returned to growth in the second quarter, and longer-term concerns such as rising social security costs.

Tokyo, Tuesday, Reuters