The approval rating of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet has risen 6.3 percentage points to 58.7 percent despite verbal gaffes by ministers and an infidelity scandal involving a parliamentary vice trade minister, a poll shows.
Some 73.2 percent of the respondents said they acknowledged the gaffes and the scandal as a sign of slackness in the government, according to the nationwide telephone survey conducted Saturday and Sunday.
In a change from usual polling procedure, Kyodo News made calls not only to fixed-line phones but also mobile phones for the first time in order to reflect the opinions of voters who only use mobile phones, many in the younger generation.