Editorial
Television takes a back seat in general election campaigns
Even after the start of the general election campaign, news of actress Noriko Sakai's arrest on suspicion of violating the Stimulants Control Law has dominated commercial television airwaves. Compared to the previous general election that took place in 2005, broadcast time spent on election-related content has gone down considerably.
"Four years ago, ratings shot up as long as we featured 'assassin candidates'," says a commercial broadcasting insider. Broadcasters appear to have learned a lesson from the previous election, dubbed "Koizumi gekijo" or Koizumi theater, in which the issue of postal privatization ultimately monopolized political debate.
This is not the only reason the number of TV programs covering the election has decreased, however. Discussion and comparative analyses of party manifestos seem to be getting increasingly more airtime, but as it turns out, viewer ratings apparently don't increase by much even when party leaders join TV debates.
Does this then mean that the public has little interest in the election? We will not know for sure until Sunday, but preliminary surveys and early voting figures suggest that voter turnout will be around the same or higher than in the previous election.
This is not an insignificant turn of events. Perhaps voters' views towards politics have been undergoing definitive change after witnessing the postal privatization fiasco.
A landslide victory by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has been predicted from data collected in preliminary polls taken by various media outlets. Although charges that voters are being swept up in the drive for regime change have been made not only by Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) candidates but also by analysts -- "theatrical politics" -- it's clear that this is not the case. This election isn't one in which the TV gossip shows call the shots, to say the very least.
Meanwhile, newspapers have generally taken a harsh tone towards the DPJ's manifesto, pointing to the party's failure to explain its proposed budget funding. Those who are fully aware of this fact yet still prefer to have the DPJ in power surely exist. Likewise, there undoubtedly are those who realize that their financial burdens may increase, but still believe that the workings of government need to be shaken up. We should view the current situation in which the DPJ has a competitive edge in the election as the result of an accumulation of such diverse opinions of the public.
In fact, it is the LDP that has tried to employ the drama of television-based politics, perhaps because it underestimated voters as being "simple." Take, for example, the LDP presidential election last fall, in which the party assumed that it could gain public interest as long as the five candidates made television appearances, or the hoopla over its appeal to Miyazaki Gov. Hideo Higashikokubaru to run in the general election as an LDP-backed candidate. It's obvious now that the LDP was mistaken in its judgment of the public.
Now, the LDP is garnering attention for its negative online campaign against the DPJ using animated cartoons, but there's no evidence that this is paying off.
It seems that many voters are trying to make level-headed judgments. This also means that the DPJ is in no position to be celebrating. (By Masao Yora, Editorial Writer)
(Mainichi Japan) August 29, 2009