To Paul's Post:

I agree with Rick's larger point that the communication skills and popularity of the PM does matter, but I would not exaggerate the point. [Incidentally, I wonder if anyone on this forum knows of recent research that calculates the impact of shiji ritsu on electoral outcomes?]

ESK: Someone should have done this? Interesting question

Certainly, there are recent cases that
raise questions. Most notably, the LDP and Komei were able to win control of the lower house in 2000 despite being led by the very unpopular PM Mori. In 2003 the DPJ did very well and the LDP had a quite mediocre performance even though the much more popular Koizumi was at the helm. Of course, the LDP lost the 2004 upper house election despite Koizumi's popularity.

ESK: I am not sure that this is as easy to answer as Paul suggests. Both LDP and DPJ (and most parliamentary parties these days) remove very unpopular PMs before an election. Thus only the moderately and very popular PMs tend to face an election and thus would be difficult to prove unpopular PMs lead to bad results. Recall that almost all PMs in the 2000s have come into office with pretty high ratings only (except Koizumi) to plummet by a year in office or less and then be removed by his party.You might be able to do a relatively moderately popular PM to a very popular PM to get the differences, but... Also Mori was not that popular but not as unpopular as he was to become at the end of his term I believe. Considering that all post-reform PMs have usually started with higher ratings I believe than most pre-reform ones (where if I'm not mistaken the average was usually 20-30% during their terms) I think it also shows the volatility of public support these days.

Finally, I think it is hard to chalk up the DPJ's sweeping 2009 victory merely to Aso's unpopularity, or the 2005 LDP wave to Koizumi's personal appeal.

ESK: Depends on what you mean by "personal appeal" I think. Certainly Koizumi's personal appeal and media image had a lot to do with the victory considering that his support ratings never went much below 50% which after 2 years in office is pretty spectacular by Japanese standards. But a lot of the overwhelming nature of the victory was certainly also due to his hammering home "reform" message and that he needed public support to change the LDP. Otherwise, without these two, the outcome would have been more similar probably to 2003 (when the DPJ beat the LDP for the first time in the PR tier of the election) or 2009--the LDP has not been popular as a party for some time so the the personal appeal of the PM does make more than a marginal difference.

Thelast two lower house elections in particular were won by a convincing idea that became an ideational wave:
breaking the LDP through postal reform (2005) and regime change (2009).
Best regards,
Ellis
********************************************
Professor Ellis S. Krauss