Support for the Japanese Cabinet and Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda plunged more than 13 percentage points over a scandal involving missing pension records, according to a poll published yesterday.
The Mainichi Shimbun said 33 percent of respondents in a Dec. 15 to Dec. 16 poll supported Fukuda's government, steeply down from 46 percent in a similar poll in October.
Some 44 percent of the poll's 1,528 respondents said they did not support his government, up from 30 percent in the previous poll, the paper said.
Political analysts say a support rate of at least 30 percent is crucial for a government to stay in power.
The Mainichi attributed the sharp decline in support in part to the government's failure to fully resolve the issue of missing pension records for 64 million claims.
The scandal helped to drive former prime minister Shinzo Abe out of office last September, and has continued to make life difficult for Fukuda.
Fukuda's government has been dogged in recent weeks by accusations that failure to resolve the problem would be considered a breach of public pledges the ruling party made during last July's electoral campaign for parliament's upper house.
The ruling party lost control of the upper chamber in part because of its handling of the mess.
The government began sending out warnings on Monday to an estimated 8.5 million people that their pension data may have gone missing.
More than 100 million people may eventually have to be notified to contact the government as it works to untangle the problem, officials said.
The poll also showed that a majority of voters do not back a Japanese naval mission supporting US and other ships patrolling the Indian Ocean in search of terrorists and drug runners.
Fifty percent of respondents in the Mainichi poll said the mission should be terminated, while 41 percent said it should be resumed.
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