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Abe could be pressured to resign

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) could win fewer than a third of the seats contested in Sunday upper house elections, a humiliating loss that could lead to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's resignation, a newspaper poll said yesterday.

The ruling coalition has a commanding majority in the more powerful lower house of the parliament, so an election defeat would not immediately threaten its hold on power.

But Abe could face pressure to resign from other leaders within his party and from the public if the LDP is spurned at the polls.

The Yomiuri Shimbun said the LDP could win fewer than 40 seats while the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan could grab 60 or more of the 121 being contested, citing its own telephone survey and analysis.

The LDP and its coalition partner, the New Komei Party, could lose their overall majority in the upper house because Komei is also struggling, the newspaper reported, without giving poll data for the junior coalition partner.

However, the final outcome of the election remains murky as about 40 percent of respondents to the paper's poll, conducted from Monday through Wednesday, said they have not decided whom they would vote for.

Abe's party and Komei need 64 seats to maintain their upper house majority. The remaining 121 of the upper chamber's 242 seats are not up for election. The ruling bloc currently controls the chamber with a combined 132 seats.

The paper conducted telephone interviews with 32,065 voters in 37 of the 47 constituencies where tough competitions are expected. No margin of error was given in the poll.

Abe was to visit southwestern Ehime Prefecture yesterday and also Chiba, just east of Tokyo, later in the day on a stumping tour.

Fearing a big loss, some ruling party leaders have begun to fan sense of crisis among voters by saying a loss for the LDP would only make North Korea happy.

The two countries are in a bitter dispute over the abduction of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s.

Pyongyang has been harshly criticizing Abe for his stridently nationalistic policies.

"North Korea is hoping for Abe's election defeat. But we should not silently succumb to North Korea's vicious intentions. We must let Mr Abe win," former prime minister Yoshiro Mori said on Wednesday during his campaign speech, the Yomiuri reported.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki also said on Wednesday: "North Korea is watching the fate of the Abe government and is hoping for unfavorable results," Japanese media reported.

Shiozaki reportedly said earlier this week that the ruling party's defeat is "most sought by the main opposition DPJ and second-most by North Korea."
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