Post-Election Blues? Takaichi Sees Support Ratings Drop in March

A Stumble at Last?

The monthly public opinion surveys by Japan’s main media organizations showed in March 2026 that Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae faced a downturn at last in her popularity to date. In the NHK poll her approval rating fell by 6.6 points, as it did in the polls by Sankei Shimbun (down 4.9 points), Jiji Press (down 4.5 points), and to a lesser extent in polls by Kyōdō News, the Asahi Shimbun, and the Mainichi Shimbun. In six out of eight of these surveys Takaichi enjoyed climbing numbers in February, on the momentum of the House of Representatives win for her Liberal Democratic Party, but the script was flipped this time.

In its coverage accompanying the survey results, Jiji noted the connection between Takaichi’s lower numbers and a scandal involving her presentation of gifts with monetary value to all LDP members in the lower house. In all, 45.7% of respondents to the Jiji poll indicated that these gifts constituted a problem for the prime minister; the Kyōdō poll, meanwhile, found fully 65.7% of respondents viewing these gifts as inappropriate.

In March 2025, then Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru saw his support numbers take a hit after it was learned that he had distributed gift vouchers to 15 new House of Representatives lawmakers from the LDP. In comparison, the blow to Takaichi’s numbers this time around does not appear to be so serious; as noted by the Asahi in reporting accompanying its poll results, there were comparatively few people who saw her transgressions as on a par with Ishiba’s last year.

Impact of Japan-US Summit Remains Strong

The March 19 summit meeting between Takaichi and US President Donald Trump took place before three of the opinion polls were implemented. In two of these, by the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Nikkei, Takaichi’s numbers climbed from the previous month, with 69% of Yomiuri respondents and 65% of Nikkei respondents declaring a favorable impression of her summit performance. The Mainichi Shimbun survey, on the other hand, saw her support rating fall slightly, but analyzed her numbers as “still high, as the prime minister has not taken a serious blow in the wake of her meeting with the US president.”

This said, the Yomiuri poll did see a slight drop in her favorability rating compared to the survey carried out in late February, soon after Takaichi launched her new cabinet in the wake of the snap general election.

The Jiji Press polls over the five months Takaichi has been in power show that she has maintained a healthy support rate in the 60% range. This is around twice that of Ishiba Shigeru in October 2025, at the end of his time in office, and three times that of Kishida Fumio just before his administration came to an end in September 2024.

(Originally published in Japanese on April 3, 2026. Banner photo: Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae in the National Diet on March 26, reporting on her summit trip to Washington DC that month. © AFP/Jiji.)