Over the past 24 hours, a few interesting stories have popped up in the Nikkei concerning Sunday’s election, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and his Liberal Democratic Party. First, we have Abe repeating his desire to not step down after the election, no matter how bad the results may be for his party. This is nothing new; we’ve been hearing such comments in the media over the past ten days or so. However, given that just a month ago, Abe’s Cabinet members were saying that such a situation shouldn’t even be discussed prior to the election, perhaps it’s a good sign that Shinzo Abe is, perhaps for the first time, talking about political reality.

In his email newsletter, Abe wrote, “I want to achieve my duties by promoting reforms, whatever the circumstances…I will inevitably face huge protests in promoting reforms, but it would not be forgivable” to quit the top job. Forgivable by whom? I think many voters wouldn’t even ask you to apologize, Mr Abe, so there’s no need to worry about forgiveness. They would just be glad at the chance to have a real leader running their country.

Then again, who’s waiting in the wings?

Moving backwards chronologically, last night the Nikkei published an article entitled Abe’s Character No Longer Top Reason For Approval.

Is that not fascinating? In other words: until now, for those who have supported Mr Abe, the main reason to do so was because of his character. However, in the Nikkei’s most recent poll, those citing Abe’s character as their primary reason for support fell from 55% to 43%. According to the paper, “character’ has been replaced as the top reason for supporting Mr Abe by, “Because it’s a Cabinet formed by the Liberal Democratic Party.”

I’m not making that up. I couldn’t make that up. I don’t suffer from the sort of delusions one would need to suffer from in order to make that up. Yes, it’s true: the number one reason given for supporting the Abe Cabinet right now is because the Cabinet is made up of members of the Liberal Democratic Party.

After the scandals and/or gaffes involving Sata, Honma, Ibuki, Yanagisawa, Matsuoka, Kyuma and now Akagi (all LDP Cabinet members), the best thing that supporters can find about the Cabinet is that it’s made up of LDP members. Ouch.

The final article I was looking at was published on Wednesday, and shows the results of the Nikkei’s most recent poll into voter defection amongst the parties. Here are some highlights:

Some 5% of voters who favored the ruling Liberal Democratic Party a week ago have decided to back the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan in the proportional representation portion of Sunday’s upper house election…

Although the pace of defection from the LDP to the DPJ has slowed, 12% of those who backed the LDP in the first online poll a month ago are now leaning toward the DPJ. The percentage of those who switched from the LDP to the DPJ amounted to only 2% over the same period. And the DPJ has secured support from 55% of those who were undecided a month ago, compared with the LDP’s 18%.

Things are looking dire indeed for the LDP. Despite that, you can be sure of two things to still be true at this time next week: 1) Getting rid of Mr Abe, should the LDP suffer heavy losses in the election, will consume quite a bit of the LDP’s energy. 2) The Cabinet will still be an LDP one.