Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party has a 9 percentage point lead over the upstart Kibo no To (Party of Hope) led by Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, a Kyodo News survey showed Sunday, three weeks ahead of the Oct. 22 general election.
In the two-day telephone survey conducted from Saturday, 24.1 percent of respondents said they would back the LDP while 14.8 percent said they planned to vote for Kibo no To in the proportional representation section of the Lower House poll.
The fledgling party reached a deal last week with the Democratic Party to have some of its members run on the Kibo no To ticket in a bid to unify voters in a showdown with the ruling bloc.