Tokyo's Gubernatorial Election in Full Swing: Koike Inch Ahead

The Upper House election just over with LDP/Komeito beating the opposition in a landslide, Tokyo has plunged into its gubernatorial election with three major contestants vying for victory.

The Liberal Democratic Party had a sluggish start due to intra-party strife over the choice of its candidate; the opposition camp had likewise circled around its own choices to confront LDP. At the last minute, both handpicked candidates, Hiroya Masuda and Shuntaro Torigoe, respectably, to dash behind a lone, independent woman candidate, Yuriko Koike, already running way ahead.

An early opinion poll taken on the phone, July a step ahead of the other two, though still too early when 40% of voters are yet undecided.

LDP supporters are divided between Koike and Masuda - Koike a seasoned politician and former defense minister and Masuda a veteran bureaucrat, scholar and former governor of Iwate Prefecture. Koike has ardent supporters in the age-brackets of 20-40 and not a few sympathizers among Masuda's LDP/Komeito-appointed supporters.

Torigoe was the last-minute choice of the opposition camp and least prepared for the election as evidenced in his reactions to questions posed him in the joint press conference at the Japan Press Club. He is supported by roughly half of the Democratic Party and Japan Communist Party supporters.

As always in most major elections, unaffiliated voters carry casting votes and the current gubernatorial election will sway either way by the way they cast their votes. Over one third is yet undecided; the rest closely split between Koike and Torigoe.

Asked what motivates voting, most Tokyoites find "policy and committment" to be most crucial (36%), followed by "politics/money and cleanliness" (20%) and "personality" (13%), in that order.

The current gubernatorial election in Tokyo is contested by the record-high 21 candidates.