Over 60 percent of respondents to a Kyodo News poll are opposed to a possible snap election before the current parliament session scheduled through late June ends, results showed Sunday.
The weekend survey comes amid speculation that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will call a snap election if his Cabinet's approval rating improves following the Group of Seven summit meeting held in Hiroshima through May 21.
Approval and disapproval ratings for Kishida's Cabinet changed little from April and stood at 47.0 and 35.9 percent, both rising 0.4 percentage point.
Asked whether Kishida should dissolve the House of Representatives by the end of the current parliament session on June 21 for an election, 60.6 percent of the respondents said he should not, while 30.2 percent expressed support for such a move.
The poll showed 62.3 percent believed Kishida either greatly or to some extent demonstrated leadership at the G-7 gathering that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended in person to rally further support for his country in its fight against Russian invasion.
Similarly, 70.8 percent said holding the summit in Hiroshima and the visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum by the world leaders including Zelenskyy were "significant" steps toward realizing a world without nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, the proportion of people who said they were worried or somewhat worried about the government's plans to expand the usage of "My Number" national identification cards stood at 70.0 percent.
The concerns come following reports that thousands of cards, linked to health insurance data, were found to have contained erroneously registered information, and in some cases, users' medical information was exposed to others.
A total 28.8 percent said they were not or not too worried about the cards.
Regarding plans by major utilities to raise electricity prices, 50.7 percent called the move "unavoidable," while 47.7 percent said it "should not be done."
Among the respondents, 40.9 percent said they supported the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, followed by 12.6 percent and 8.8 percent who said they backed the opposition Japan Innovation Party and main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, respectively, while 19.8 percent did not support any political party.
Conducted Saturday and Sunday, the survey called 511 randomly selected households with eligible voters on landline phones and 2,716 mobile phone numbers. It yielded responses from 427 households and 625 mobile phone users.
