Ruling, opposition camps in tight race for upper house majority+

TOKYO, June 26 Kyodo -
Japan's ruling coalition is on the borderline as to whether it can secure the
56 seats needed for it to retain a majority in the House of Councillors in the
July 11 election, a Kyodo News survey showed Saturday based on a telephone poll
and its own research in constituencies.
The main opposition Liberal Democratic Party has a good chance to garner about
45 seats against its current 38 to be contested in the triennial poll in which
half of the upper chamber's 242 seats are up for grabs, while other opposition
parties struggle to keep their shares and the relatively new Your Party may
leap to seven from zero.
But the situation may change in the course of the 17-day official campaigning
that began Thursday as about half the respondents to the phone poll on about
30,000 eligible voters from Thursday to Saturday across Japan said they were
still undecided about for whom they will cast ballots.
Of the 29 prefecture-based constituencies where candidates are vying for a
single seat, DPJ candidates and their LDP rivals are facing off in 27, and are
fighting neck-in-neck in most of them except for at least five districts in
which the DPJ is ahead and three in which the LDP is ahead.
The DPJ and the LDP are likely, meanwhile, to win one seat each in the 12
two-seat constituencies, despite the DPJ's strategy to field two candidates in
those districts with the aim of sweeping both.
The two major parties are also expected to get at least one each in Kanagawa
and four other three-seat districts plus Tokyo where five seats will be up for
grabs, and the DPJ may secure another in Tokyo and Kanagawa, according to the
survey results.
Under the proportional representation section of the contest, by which 48 of
the 121 seats at stake are filled, the DPJ will likely obtain somewhere between
15 and 19, and the LDP between 10 and 14.
But the DPJ's tiny coalition partner People's New Party is facing an uphill
battle, as it is only likely to win one proportional-representation seat at
best, while three of its six seats are up for reelection.
The smaller opposition parties New Komeito, Japanese Communist Party and Social
Democratic Party also have a grim outlook as to whether they can regain their
11, four and three seats at stake.
Among newcomer opposition parties, Your Party, which currently has only one
uncontested seat in the upper house, has the impetus to win seven seats in the
coming race, but the New Renaissance Party led by LDP defector Yoichi Masuzoe
would obtain one seat at best, while its five seats are at stake.
The Sunrise Party of Japan headed by former industry minister Takeo Hiranuma
could fail to recapture its one seat at stake.
==Kyodo