The approval rating for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's Cabinet stood at 58.1 percent in a Kyodo News survey conducted through Tuesday, up 2.4 percentage points from when he took office in early October.
The disapproval rating for the Cabinet was 26.8 percent, up 3.1 points from early October, the survey found after the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito retained a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives, the powerful lower chamber of parliament, in Sunday's general election.
Only 35.3 percent of respondents of the two-day nationwide telephone survey said they were satisfied with the election outcome, while 16.5 percent were dissatisfied.
Nearly half, 47.9 percent, said they could not say either way.
The LDP won 261 seats, 15 fewer than before the election but enough to effectively control all of the lower chamber's standing committees by itself and push forward its legislative agenda. Komeito took 32.
Among the opposition, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan won 96 seats, the Japan Innovation Party secured 41 and the Japanese Communist Party took 10.
In the survey, 42.5 percent of the respondents said the opposition parties should have won more seats, while 39.9 percent thought the outcome was appropriate and 14.0 percent said the ruling coalition should have won more seats.
The strategy of opposition groups including the CDPJ and the JCP to unify candidates in single-member districts to avoid splitting the anti-LDP vote proved unpopular, with 61.5 percent saying they should change it compared to only 32.2 percent who said they should continue to pursue it.
Asked which party they support, 45.7 percent said the LDP, followed by the Japan Innovation Party with 14.4 percent, up from 5.0 in early October.
The sharp increase in support of the Innovation Party was in line with nearly quadruple of its standing in the lower chamber to 41 seats in Sunday's election.
The CDPJ was backed by 11.2 percent, Komeito 6.2 percent, the JCP 4.0 percent, the Democratic Party for the People 3.3 percent, Reiwa Shinsengumi 1.8 percent, and the Social Democratic Party 1.2 percent, while 10.5 percent said they do not support any party.
Economic policy was chosen as the most important issue in the general election by 33.5 percent, followed by pensions, medical and elderly care with 16.0 percent and the COVID-19 response with 14.9 percent.
Regarding why voter turnout was so low at 55.93 percent, 50.0 percent of the respondents said it was because they thought casting ballots would not change anything, 17.9 percent said there were no candidates to their liking, and 17.4 percent said it was not easy to understand issues of contention.
The survey covered 636 randomly selected households with eligible voters, of which 522 responded, and reached 1,686 mobile phone users, also securing responses from 522.
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