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Koizumi takes to the streets ahead of election day

With just one day left until Japanese voters go to the polls, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and other political party leaders took the streets yesterday to woo urban voters, seen as crucial to the outcome.

Koizumi, hoping to lead his three-way coalition to a decisive victory and win a mandate for his economic reforms, told voters in a suburb north of Tokyo that only the ruling camp could push ahead with his agenda for change.

"What we want is to grow the bud of reform into a big tree under a stable government," the popular Koizumi told a crowd of some 4,000 gathered near a train station, adding that if the opposition were to rise to power, it would result in confusion.

The main opposition Democratic Party's leader, Naoto Kan, urged voters in a western Tokyo suburb to give the party a shot at ruling the country, governed by Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for most of the past five decades.

"Whether we can achieve [a change of government] depends on your votes tomorrow," said Kan, a former grass roots activist and one-time health minister.

Polls last weekend suggested Koizumi's camp would achieve a comfortable win in the first general election since he took office in 2001, and that the LDP could keep its simple majority.

Both ruling and the opposition camps are keen to attract the urban electorate, most of whom are "floating voters" without any preference for a particular party. Such voters make up nearly half of the entire electorate by some estimates.

The generally pro-reform Democrats view these non-affiliated voters as the key to increasing their presence substantially in the election for parliament's powerful 480-member Lower House.

Floating voters have tended to cast their ballots for the opposition, but their turnout has historically been lower than that of party faithful such as the farmers, small business owners and building contractors who traditionally vote LDP.

Public opinion polls published yesterday showed that more voters wanted a government led by the LDP rather than one dominated by the Democrats, in line with the earlier surveys.

In a poll conducted by the <> 40 percent of respondents said they favoured an LDP-led government against 33 percent for one centred on the Democrats. The figures were similar to another poll published by the <> which showed 43 percent for the LDP and 33 percent for the Democrats.

But among non-affiliated voters, the numbers tipped slightly in favour of the Democrats, with 29 percent favouring a Democrat-led government against 26 percent for one dominated by Koizumi's LDP, the Asahi poll showed.

The Democrats -- who share much of Koizumi's reform rhetoric but argue only they can effect true change -- might also take heart from data in the Mainichi survey showing that 76 percent of respondents intended to show up at the polls tomorrow.

Democratic Party leaders have said that if voter turnout tops 65 percent or nears 70 percent, they would win enough parliament seats to take power away from the ruling bloc.
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