Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party will likely garner more than twice as many votes as the Democratic Party, its biggest rival, in the pivotal July 10 Upper House election, newspaper surveys said Monday.

Abe said the LDP and its junior coalition partner Komeito are aiming to win a majority of the 121 seats being contested to further the ruling bloc's agenda. Constitutional revision is a major issue in the election because Abe's long-held dream is to revise the U.S.-drafted pacifist Constitution.

Abe recently delayed a sales tax hike by 2½ years to October 2019, purportedly to better the coalition's election chances.

In a poll by the daily Asahi Shimbun, for the proportional representation seats, 38 percent of those surveyed said they would likely vote for the LDP, versus 15 percent for the DP.

A similar survey by the Yomiuri Shimbun said that 35 percent of the respondents intended to vote for the ruling bloc and 12 percent for the DP.

Abe said in January the LDP wanted to win a combined two-thirds majority with Komeito and like-minded opposition parties in the election so he can revise the Constitution. In recent weeks, though, he has tried to play that down, saying it is premature to discuss a constitutional revision as an election issue.

To formally amend the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Diet and a majority in a referendum. Abe's ruling bloc already has a two-thirds majority in the Lower House.

To prevent the ruling bloc and two other opposition parties who are open to constitutional revision from gaining the needed majority in the upper chamber, the DP and three smaller parities have agreed to put forward unified candidates for the 32 single-seat constituencies.