TABLE-Japan opposition LDP holds lead before Dec 16 election-polls
TOKYO, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Japan's largest opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) kept its lead against the ruling Democratic Party and a new group led by a nationalist former governor of Tokyo ahead of a Dec. 16 lower house election, newspaper surveys showed on Monday. A poll by the Asahi Shimbun daily showed 20 percent of voters would cast their ballots for the LDP, led by conservative former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who advocates aggressive monetary easing and stronger military. That compares with 15 percent for Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's Democratic Party of Japan and 9 percent for the Japan Restoration Party, headed by Shintaro Ishihara, who triggered the latest territorial spat with China by proposing to have the Tokyo metropolitan government buy disputed islands. In a separate survey by the Yomiuri Shimbun daily, the LDP took 19 percent, while the Japan Restoration Party and the DPJ, which swept to power in 2009 to end more than half of century of almost unbroken rule by the LDP, each won 13 percent.
Following is a table based on media polls asking which party voters would choose in the proportional representation stage of the lower house election.
POLL DATE DPJ LDP RESTORATION Asahi Dec 3 15 20 9 Yomiuri Dec 3 13 19 13 Nikkei Nov 29 13 23 15 Asahi Nov 26 13 23 9 Yomiuri Nov 26 10 25 14 Kyodo Nov 25 8.4 18.7 10.3 Kyodo Nov 19 10.8 23.0 6.8 Nikkei Nov 19 16 25 11 Asahi Nov 19 15 22 6 Mainichi Nov 19 11 17 10 Yomiuri Nov 18 13 26 8 Asahi Nov 17 16 23 4 Asahi Nov 13 12 29 5 Yomiuri Nov 5 10 25 12 Kyodo Nov 4 12.1 27.7 10.8 Nikkei Oct 29 11 27 13 Asahi Oct 22 13 36 3 Kyodo Oct 3 12.3 31.3 13.9 Yomiuri Oct 3 18 36 13 Asahi Oct 3 17 30 4 Nikkei Sept 28 14 35 12 Asahi Sept 11 15 23 5 Kyodo Sept 2 12.4 22.2 17.6 Yomiuri Aug 13 11 21 16 Mainichi Aug 13 14 21 N.A. Kyodo Aug 12 14.3 23.5 10.7 Asahi Aug 6 13 23 N.A. Yomiuri July 16 14 18 N.A. Kyodo July 15 14.1 19.2 13.2 Asahi July 10 14 22 N.A.
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka)